


Iron Helix

by Darsynia



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Absolutely Not RPF, Actor Names Used For Reference, Banter, Bruce Needed a Bestie, Canon-Typical Violence, Cliche Premise Done Well, Clint Gives Good Advice, F/M, Heartwarming Team Moments, Humor, Not Canon-Typical Profanity, OK Maybe I Should Tag For Angst, Ripped From Our Universe Into Theirs, Romance, Set In The Months Before Age Of Ultron, Slow Burn, So does Thor, Superpower Worldbuilding, Truth or Dare, Who Is The Stubbornest In The Land?, Yes I Have a THING About First Names, locked in a room, tw: mentions of blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-18 08:09:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 73,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29365278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darsynia/pseuds/Darsynia
Summary: She woke up in a hospital bed under the name HYacinth Doe. Doctor Bruce Banner told her she had been rescued from a HYDRA facility, along with evidence that their scientists had ripped her out of her universe and into theirs, granting her healing powers in the process.The problem is, the Avengers aren't even *real* in her universe. Banner and all the others look like the actors that portray them, and even though Director Fury is gratified to hear he's just as badass where she comes from, she's not sure the others would feel the same. Her biggest challenge isn't actually being asked to join the Avengers, but figuring out how to hide her crush on her favorite character, Tony Stark. At first, that's not a problem--he doesn't trust her. It's when he doubles down on his theory about her origins that things get tricky.
Relationships: Tony Stark/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 220
Kudos: 138





	1. Astronomical Dawn

**Author's Note:**

> So apparently it's my goal to write an OC fic for all of my favorite fandoms? I described myself as a pull-back car VROOMING out this story after watching some of the MCU that I needed to catch up on. I KNOW I have a lot of stories in the works, but this one basically sprang fully-formed from my forehead and I don't know what else to tell you!  
>   
> Now, for the real talk. Does this summary read like the premise of every fangirl's first fic? You betcha. I can promise you that it doesn't read like badfic, though. There's some deep characterization scenes in here, some pretty funny moments, action scenes, and hopefully a compelling, realistic romance between two people that never should have met, but for the hand of fate.
> 
> The chapter titles are a journey through the phases and names for the sun's light hitting the Earth. It's set during the search for HYDRA bases, pre-Ultron.

###  Chapter One: Astronomical Dawn

She woke to the sun, as always.

When she opened her eyes, though, she saw that it wasn’t the sun that bathed her in brightness. In fact, there was only one yellow-tinged light, and that was positioned over her bed. The bulbs everywhere else were harsh white, their utilitarianism matching the hospital room she was lying in. Looking down, she saw an IV in one arm and a pulse oximeter soft-taped to the opposite hand. As she blinked rapidly, trying to figure out what had happened-- nothing hurt, but that didn’t mean much, depending on what was in that IV --to put her in this position, she saw movement at the other end of the room.

A man wearing a white lab coat was bent over a sink, washing his hands.

She had a decision to make: pretend to sleep, wait for him to turn around and notice that she was awake, or call out to him. The man turned before she had a chance to choose for herself, and suddenly, the whole situation made a perverse sort of sense. It was obviously a dream.

The man in the lab coat was Mark Ruffalo.

“You’re awake,” he said, offering a half-smile. “Good.”

Inwardly, she was confused. Sure, she liked the actor, though she’d really only seen him in a few things, most of them Marvel. Why would  _ he _ be in her dreams over anyone else? Had she watched a YouTube clip the night before and forgotten?

Maybe it was a trick of the light, and any second he’d start looking like a regular person so they could joke about her ridiculous but complimentary first impression.

After drying his hands, the man in the lab coat walked over and stood at the foot of her bed, looking awkward. He still looked like Ruffalo. She told herself that if she had to wake up in a hospital bed, it would be best if she were dreaming anyway. The kinds of accidents where the person didn’t even remember what happened tended to be the worst ones.

“I’ve had almost a week to figure out what to say to you when you did wake up, and here I am. I’ve got nothing,” the man said.

“A  _ week?” _

He winced. “See, I should have done better than that.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I can promise you, you’re in perfect health right now. I’m Dr. Banner--”

“Doctor Bruce Banner is in my hospital room when I wake up. He alludes to my having been in some sort of coma for a week, but not to worry, I’m in good health? Tell me, Doctor: would  _ you _ believe him?”

“No. No, I wouldn’t. You’re absolutely right.” He sighed, then looked around behind him to grab a folding chair. He opened it and sat down. She scrambled to scoot up in the bed, feeling odd about the idea of talking to someone while lying prone.

She liked that he reached out and pushed some buttons to adjust her bed so she could sit up. Once she was all situated, he said, “All right, maybe I should start over?”

“Nah, just push through it. This is a dream anyway, so it’s not like I’ll have any lasting psychological damage if this conversation gets scary,” she told him.

“A dream?” the man said. “What makes you say that?”

“The part where you’re either a fictional character from a superhero movie series, or just the actor playing that fictional character?” she said bluntly. She looked around at the room. It did look a bit more ‘futuristic’ than an ordinary hospital room. “My mind is ridiculously inventive, that’s for sure.”

‘Bruce-Mark Ruffalo-Banner’ looked at her with a mixture of concern and amusement. “‘Superhero movie series,’ okay. Just because you might have seen me on television--”

_ “Are _ you ever on television?” she interrupted. “Like, you, you, not Hulk you? Because Bruce Banner is an incredibly private person, and it’s probably been years since he’s been in the kind of position to need to do that.”

“JARVIS? Encrypt this conversation, would you? Just to be on the safe side,” he said.

> _ =Certainly, Dr. Banner. What level of encryption do you desire?= _

“The highest.”

> _ =Done.= _

He raised an eyebrow as he looked back at her. “So you recognize me, you’re saying? Would you recognize the other Avengers if I showed them to you?” Before she had a chance to answer, he leaned forward in the chair, a look of compassion on his face. “You know, if the knowledge that you’re here in a Stark facility is overwhelming, no one would blame you if you’d come up with some sort of a delusion--”

“Have you ever heard of Mark Ruffalo?” she interrupted. “Paul Bettany?”

The stiff way that ‘Banner’ straightened in his chair made her nervous. “Bettany… Yeah, I think so. Is that who I look like to you? I can’t picture him.”

“No, you’re the other one. Bettany is the voice of JARVIS, actually.”

> _ =Paul Bettany. Shakespearean stage actor of much acclaim. Known for his charity work raising awareness of childhood learning disabilities.= _

“Can you play a clip of his voice?” ‘Banner’ asked, sounding a bit stunned. By the time JARVIS’s clip of Bettany had finished playing, she had his full, wild-eyed attention.

“If it’s any consolation, Mr. JARVIS, this is a dream, and the whole thing will fade away just out of reach when I wake up. The interesting ones always do,” she said, looking up at the ceiling.

> = _ If it’s of any consolation to you in return, I shall still be available to assist you once you have determined it is not a dream. _ =

“Analysis of that voice in comparison to yours, JARVIS?”

> _ =The two are indistinguishable, Doctor Banner. I am forced to conclude that Mr. Stark modeled my voice on Mr. Bettany. It is unsurprising; they have been noted to be seen together at some events both before and after my creation.= _

“Is it possible that you’ve formed this--”

“Don’t say delusion again,” she warned the doctor.

The sheepish smile that he offered her was pure Bruce Banner circa the first Avengers movie. “Fair enough. But it’s a thought, isn’t it? There’ve been some suggestions of an animated series--”

It was her turn to interrupt. “Which you’d probably rather set yourself on fire than participate in! A team of animators creating a  _ cartoon Hulk _ to smash things?”

“All right, I yield.” He laughed lightly.

“I tell you what. You tell me why I’m here at SHIELD or Avengers’ compound or whatever, in a hospital bed, and we can decide if it sounds realistic enough not to be a dream, deal?” she said, crossing her arms.

‘Banner’ winced.

“Yeah, I thought so. Lay it on me anyway, I guess,” she said.

He leaned forward, his demeanor shifting to businesslike. “As you might know, the HYDRA organization has revealed itself to have been growing in strength. We believe they have an item of great power, and during our search for that item, we found you.”

“This is right out of ‘superhero origin story plot points,’ and you still think you’re not a figment of my imagination?”

“When we got to the base where you were discovered, we cut the power, like always,” he said, not reacting to her comment at all. “By the time we got to the heart of the facility, three of the five subjects on artificial support had already perished.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to say something like, ‘And here’s where you tell me I was one of the two, but hear me out: what if I was one of the three, and this is all a death fever dream?!’ Something about his bleak tone of resignation stopped her.

“The research we salvaged was about alternate universes. There wasn’t much left, but after our guys examined the bodies of the three who died, we understood more.” He reached up to scratch at his neck; he looked like he was struggling to figure out how to explain the rest. Considering what he’d already gone over, she couldn’t imagine what was yet to come.

“Are you even allowed to tell me this?”

The doctor let out a rush of breath. It wasn’t quite a laugh, but it wasn’t full of relief, either. “Honestly? I have no idea. But when I was hurt-- I wanted to know. I wanted to know everything. Finding out some of the details later… wasn’t great.”

“If you’re dancing around the idea that I have some sort of weird, HYDRA-induced superpower, I’d like to remind you again that this isn’t real. And if it was, would you want to anger the woman with a HYDRA-induced superpower? Just tell me!” she said, trying to ignore the way she felt like an exhausted rabbit tied to her hospital bed by IV tubing.

She was ashamed of her outburst when he got up and walked away from her. “JARVIS?” he said, finally.

> _ =Your HYDRA file shows that, through as-yet undetermined means, their scientists found a way to pull you from your original universe into ours. According to the documentation we discovered, this can have the effect of converting the energy created by your absence into a… HYDRA-induced superpower.= _

“Did your boss teach you how to be snarky or did you manifest that way as a  _ Stark-induced  _ superpower?” she asked. “And what power? Something really dangerous? Is that why Banner’s in here with me? Only Hulk can contain the horror of my abilities, something like that?”

When JARVIS had reused her phraseology, Banner had turned around, his mouth open as if objecting to the blunt way the AI had revealed the information. At her accusation about his presence in the room, though, that objection solidified into refutation.

“No. Absolutely not. I’m here in my capacity as a  _ doctor, _ you’re not dangerous. Quite the contrary, actually.” He broke into a crooked smile and walked up to stand directly beside her bed. “You’re a healer.”

8888888888

The next few hours were spent as if she were filming some Marvel B-roll. She met multiple SHIELD/Stark/Avengers-affiliated doctors and spoke to a woman who looked a lot like Agent Maria Hill--and through it all, her certainty that this was a dream was simply reinforced, over and over.

After all, she couldn’t even remember her own name!

Despite telling her with complete confidence that she was a healer of some sort, Banner (he was definitely Banner, not Ruffalo. The latter might be a good actor, but she doubted he had the same subtle undercurrent of self-loathing that Bruce Banner had) had been cagey about how they knew for sure. She suspected the Avengers had video footage from the complex they’d plucked her out of, but this was  _ her _ dream, and she didn’t want to watch creepy HYDRA footage of herself in pain.

She went through a couple gentle questioning sessions with some doctors, then had an encounter with a nervous-looking agent who backed down from his questions about her family every time Banner cleared his throat. Banner’s behavior seemed more like a bodyguard or a psychiatrist than a doctor, but she appreciated his presence all the same. Unfortunately, the bodyguard thing didn’t last much past the point where someone brought her dinner.

“You’ve been a lab rat for who knows how long, and stuck in a hospital bed for at least a week. Eat it anyway,” Banner said after she’d picked at her food for a full ten minutes without really eating anything.

“Don’t you have sciencing to do?”

“It’s your dream, you tell me.”

She rolled her eyes and started with the jello, just to see if he’d react poorly to dessert first. “I can’t believe you thought anything that happened this afternoon would convince me otherwise. I mean,  _ come on.” _

“I’ll admit, it is a bit fantastical.”

“Well, so far the only thing in the ‘it’s real’ column is that the food sucks. If this is a dream, it should be amazing. I want my money back.” She tossed her empty jello cup onto the tray in mock disgust.

“If everyone could dream a perfect world, food and all, there’d be a lot more sleep tech, don’t you think? Hell, I’d invest in it.”

Banner looked down at his shoes with a wistful expression, but she felt awful. Of course  _ this _ man in particular would seek out a perfect dream world. Would it be a place where he could have a bad day and not change color? No, she decided. He probably wished he could just go back to a time when he didn’t worry about that happening at all.

Saying ‘sorry’ would draw attention to her blunder, so she deflected. “So is it weird that I don’t remember my name, or is that standard dream stuff?”

Banner’s expression shuttered again. “Not strange. Head trauma, psychological trauma--”

She shook her head vigorously. “Nope, don’t want to know about that. What’s the name on my chart, Bruce?”

“Hyacinth.” He lifted his head and smiled, the expression twisted by something she thought might be related to her using his first name without permission. “It’s actually Hy Doe, I presume because of where we found you, but I guess one of the nurses was horrified and penciled in a better version.”

“That’s sweet of her, but is it necessary, at this point? You said you’ve recovered my files, why not put my true name on there?”

“It’s not quite that simple.” He took off his glasses with one hand and rubbed the bridge of his nose with the other. “Based on what we learned from the people who didn’t make it, there are some big and small differences between universes. You share genetic material, but you’re not the same person.”

“What happened to that person?”

“It was a swap. A one way trip. We’re pretty sure your counterpart couldn’t have survived it.” Banner’s expression was bleak.

Words dried up in her mouth. Everything up to that point had felt otherworldly, reinforcing the dream, but that felt real, somehow. She tried on the name in her mind. Hyacinth. It would do. Now, to push back.

“How do you know I’m a healer, Bruce? Did you see evidence in your HYDRA data? A video?” He shook his head, and she pulled off the pulse ox in a quick, harsh motion, letting it hang on its cord. “You’re a bad liar, has anyone ever told you that?” The monitor started beeping. “Can I heal myself, do you think?” Hyacinth asked, resting her hand on the IV.

Banner strode over and grabbed both of her wrists. “JARVIS, kill that, will you?”

> _ =Certainly.= _

The beeping stopped.

“You weren’t in stasis when we got to the facility,” Banner said in a quiet, urgent voice. He was still holding her wrists, but the grip had gentled. “When we got to you, you were trying to heal one of the people who was.”

“Trying?” she whispered. “God, what did you see?” Suddenly, she realized he hadn’t, he couldn’t have. “Shit, never mind.” Pulling gently was enough to dislodge his hold on her. This was too heavy a topic. She needed to shift the tone back to the goofy dream world she’d started out in. “Is that person here, in another room? Jeez, you didn’t put Stark in there with them, did you?”

Banner scrubbed a hand over his face, and Hyacinth wondered if she’d crossed a line, but when he lowered his hand, he was laughing.

“Thanks for that,” he said, backing up enough to drop into the chair. “I only know what I was told. No, the other survivor’s not here. He… had a bad reaction to coming out of stasis. And no, we don’t think you can heal yourself.” He nodded toward the hospital bed, and Hyacinth blushed.

“Right, if I could, I probably wouldn’t have needed to be in here.” Then, something he’d already said finally registered. “So if I wasn’t in stasis… he attacked me, didn’t he? The other guy. Bad enough that I needed all this.”

Banner nodded, just once.

“I don’t feel anything, though. I mean, yes, I’ve got this IV but no one’s added anything to it in at least four hours. If it were pain relief it would have definitely worn off by now.”

“It wasn’t physical.”

_ “Oh.” _

Banner checked his watch. “I should get going. I’ll stop by tomorrow morning, but I’ve got a backlog of things to do in the lab.”

“You have a phone, right?” she said, amused and touched at the same time.

His brows furrowed. “Somewhere, probably? I usually just use JARVIS.”

“I’m not dictating text messages to an AI!” Hyacinth said, laughing nervously. “I mean, this is all moot anyway. I’ll wake up tomorrow with the alarm and head to work, just like always, because--”

“This is all a dream,” he finished at the same time she did. “Do me a favor, then?” Banner said, walking over to the door and putting one hand on the knob. “Start thinking about what you’ll do when you find out it isn’t?”

“Bruce, I’m literally calling you  _ Bruce. _ It’s a dream. If it were real, it’d take more dinners, fewer IVs, and about ten years of time spent with you to get to that point, and you know it,” she said. “Say hi to RDJ for me tomorrow, okay?”

“Sometimes we have to accept a slightly altered reality, I guess,” Bruce shrugged. “It was nice to meet you, Hyacinth.”

8888888888

She woke to a brief, sharp pain in her hand.

“Ooh, I’m sorry. I was hoping to get this out without waking you,” a voice said. It was a nurse wearing the same uniform as the ones from her weird Marvel dream the day before. As she stared, the nurse continued the process of removing the IV, slapping on a bandaid and squeezing her hand. “Someone dropped this off for you. I don’t think it’s even out for consumer release yet. Lucky!”

The nurse, whose nametag seemed to be deliberately obscured by a flap on her uniform, handed her a phone. As soon as Hyacinth was alone in the room again, she flipped it over. There wasn’t an apple logo on the back.

“No Apple, huh? I guess this is a ‘StarkPhone?’ _ ” _ As soon as she spoke, the phone’s screen lit up with a message.

> **JARVIS told me you were awake. How are you handling the whole being wrong thing? I could come by for lunch.**
> 
> **-DBBanner**

“JARVIS, isn’t that a violation of HIPAA? Or do you even have that legislation in this messed up fake universe?”

> _ =Good morning, Miss Hyacinth. As it happens, Doctor Bruce Banner is your medical proxy, as assigned by an emergency waiver signed by our government liaison.= _

“Yeah, sure, why not,” she muttered. Louder, she said, “I like you, JARVIS, but I don’t know about the whole ‘Hyacinth’ thing. If I’m going to have to go all in on this being real, can I speak to the manager? That’s Fury, right?” As soon as she said it, she remembered the scenes of Fury’s attack, his scene in (…was it a barn?) saying he’d be in touch.

> _ =You are scheduled for a meeting with the current Director in the afternoon today, with the caveat that your doctor must sign off on your fitness to attend.= _

“One of the two I met yesterday, then, because it would be highly improper for my doctor to be the same person as my medical proxy, and it would be ridiculous to think this facility would do anything that wasn’t by the books,” Hyacinth said with deep sarcasm. 

> _ =Doctor Banner would like to know if there is a problem with your device, as you have yet to respond.= _

She looked at the phone. There were no obvious buttons, and though it felt kind of ridiculous, she placed her thumb on a few more obvious areas where a fingerprint scan might have woken it up. Nothing happened. “It’s as mystifying as a brick, J. I have no idea how to work this thing.”

> _ =Hold it up to your face as if you were reading from it. It has facial recognition.= _

“I’m definitely not smart enough for this universe if it’s real, but this tracks for one of those embarrassment dreams,” she muttered, holding the phone up.

In the seconds before it registered her face, she saw a reflection of herself in the black glass, and gasped.

Her features were recognizable, but her hair--her hair had no color left at all, as if had been shocked white! A few minutes later, while she was still sitting there stunned, the door to her room burst open, and Bruce skidded in. He was out of breath, and she dropped the phone on her lap in surprise.

“I forgot to warn you. I’m sorry,” he said.

“What is going  _ on _ with you?!” she blurted out. “I mean, yes, I’m going to need a mirror  _ right the heck now, _ but you’re like, one of the most private and reticent characters in the whole Marvel cinematic universe, maybe even on IMDB, and you’re really just… disproportionately invested in my well being. What gives?”

Bruce held up a finger, stuck his head out of the door and spoke with someone for a few seconds, and then shut it again. She would have expected him to make another ‘no, it’s really not a dream’ joke, but instead, he almost looked  _ guilty. _

“JARVIS?” he said, not breaking eye contact with her.

> _ =Encrypting.= _

She must have looked like she was about to leap out of the bed and demand answers, because Bruce held up both hands in front of him in surrender. “Stay put, all right? I’ll explain.”

She nodded begrudgingly and pulled the ponytail holder out of her hair, tugging a chunk of it down to where she could see it. Her hair wasn’t blonde or white but a really rich silver color, a full-bodied, shining grey that was obviously not related to aging.

He hadn’t said anything, despite promising to explain, so she said, “You knew my hair isn’t naturally this color. You have files with my picture on them. Even if they’re files from this universe, so not exactly  _ Me  _ me.”

“Yes.”

A brief knock on the door prompted Bruce to answer it, taking the compact hand mirror from the unseen person offering it. He handed over the mirror.

She gasped again, and didn’t have to look up to know he was wincing.

“My eyes,” she whispered, stunned. All the color seemed to have been leached away from her hair and eyes. They were both silver, if a person could be described as having silver eyes. The word ‘grey’ didn’t seem to come close enough.

“You know some of my story, I’m sure,” Bruce said, coming over to stand next to the bed. His tone was hushed, as if he didn’t even want JARVIS to hear what he was saying. “I saw your files before I saw you, and I felt a responsibility-- I  _ know _ what it’s like to not be the same after something catastrophic. To not recognize yourself in what’s left.”

She didn’t want to reject his words, not when he’d said them in a way that made clear how much they laid him bare--but she couldn’t accept this. It was too much, all of it.

“I’d like to wake up, now, please.”

Bruce let out a tiny, miserable sound.

> _ =Excuse me, I thought you should know that I set a do not disturb on the room, but it’s about to be--= _

Tony Stark’s voice on the same intercom broke through JARVIS’s warning, brassy and sarcastic. 

_ “Hey, Bruce, sorry to bother you, but I figure you’d like to know your setup here is about to fry some circuits, and the last time I messed with your lab you swatted me like a fly, so…” _

Hyacinth’s hands rushed to her cheeks on hearing Stark’s voice. Her heartbeat started racing and she tasted metal in her mouth. The possibility that she could be sharing a universe with Tony Stark was hitting her like a boxer. For the first time, she wondered if there was a chance, however small, that it was real.

“I gotta go,” Bruce said.

She knew she was probably blushing again, so she just nodded. When he’d made it to the door, she added one last thing.

“Say hi to RDJ for me.”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just tossing a little note in here to recognize that the pronoun use in this chapter and some of the next are uncharacteristically heavy, because it felt wrong to go all in on 'Hyacinth' until she felt more comfortable using it. So if there was something that felt a bit off to you as a reader, that was probably it!


	2. Nautical Dawn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hyacinth asks Director Fury what color lightsaber he'd choose. Then, Bruce shows her how much he trusts her healing powers before the big meeting where she is introduced to some of the other Avengers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This had such a nice reception that I decided to toss in chapter two earlier than planned. 
> 
> While chronologically, Director Fury is still very much in hiding, I decided that the potential of someone with healing powers joining their side was important enough to come back for, with (off screen) precautions.
> 
> ==TRIGGER WARNING== Mentions of a cutting injury which is subsequently healed

### Chapter Two: Nautical Dawn

Her StarkPhone unlocked at the sight of her face. She wondered if it would if she looked like her old self.

Hyacinth waited for her meeting with the Director with rising excitement, even though she didn’t know what she could possibly tell him about what she was going through. The best she could figure, she was stuck in a coma in a real hospital bed, and whatever traumatic thing had happened probably had involved her family, too. Her mind was forming an alternate reality for her to cope with the few overheard words and phrases that made it through, just like Banner said. And if that meant she got to spend some time with the Avengers and get a cool new look with an actual superpower? She was okay with that.

The agent who came to escort her to the meeting didn’t find it funny when she asked where he kept the hood to keep her from remembering the way.

The office he brought her to looked like a Marvel set, unsurprisingly. The tall, wingback desk chair was faced away from her when she walked in. As the seconds ticked by, she started to wonder if it was actually empty.

Finally, the chair turned, revealing Director Nick Fury.

As much as she wanted to say something, recognize his unlikely survival, offer some kind of thanks for his continued work, she knew it wasn’t her place.

“I hear you’ve made an unlikely ally,” he said to her by way of introduction. “Good. Man needed someone to angst over other than himself. Not that you’ll tell him I said that,” Fury said, glaring at her with his one eye.

“I didn’t spend _that_ much time at a HYDRA facility,” she said.

“You’re quick. Good.” Fury barked. Then, without changing expression, he said, “Your doctors think you’ve gone off the deep end. Have you?”

“Sir, if you could be in a Star Wars movie, what color would you like your lightsaber to be?”

“Purple. What makes you think that will convince me you’re not crazy?”

“How much of my conversations with Banner do you have access to?” she asked. His withering look of scorn was enough of an answer. “So you know that he told me I was pulled out of one universe into this one, right? What would you say if I said you’re not actually real in my universe?”

“What sort of not real? You clearly knew who Banner was, to the point of being as confused as the rest of us are that he opened up to you so fast,” Fury asked.

“The kind of not real that Star Wars is. I thought he was an actor, because for me, the person he looks like _is_ an actor--and so are you. I’ve watched _movies_ about the Avengers. I’ve watched other movies with most of the actors that play you guys. And honestly? If I can’t just wake up and make this go away I’d opt to get zapped back to that universe if at all possible, because I’m not sure I’m ready for all the differences in this one.”

“Well Star Wars still exists, so don’t write me off just yet. I think I would have remembered a purple lightsaber, though.”

“They let you pick the color.”

“Damn straight they did. Looks like no matter what universe I’m in, I’m still me, at least.” Fury leaned back in his desk chair. “So it’s been a few days. You still think we’re not real?”

She nodded, offering a smile of apology.

“What accounts for the length of time you’ve been stuck here, then? Let me hear how your brain works.”

“Bruce--” she broke off when he looked surprised, wondering if she’d crossed a line. Fury made a dismissive gesture.

“If he doesn't mind, I don’t either. Go on.”

“He thinks I tried to escape the reality of what HYDRA was doing to me by coming up with a fake reality where you’re all movie stars instead of real superheroes. I was thinking about that, though. Instead of the HYDRA thing being real, what if I was in an accident in my real, ordinary life. Maybe _this_ is my coping mechanism, not the other way around.” She’d been looking down at her hands as she spoke, but now she looked up at Fury.

“That’s a well-reasoned response. I have a challenge for you, in light of that: embrace it. You think you’re working through trauma? Do that. Throw yourself in with both feet. Because the truth is, we need you.” He sat forward in the chair and folded his hands in front of him. It was so perfectly Fury that she wondered where the camera was. “You say you know us all from movies? Perfect. That means you probably know what you _need_ to know. You’ve watched us fight, you’ve watched us hurt, you’ve seen why we need a healer. Join us. Be an Avenger. Live the dream.”

Hyacinth stared at him for a long second, and then burst into laughter. Fury looked downright affronted.

“No, no!” she wheezed. “That was just-- such a great speech, and I-- You’re REALLY famous, the actor that plays you, I mean. So when you sounded so emphatic, there, it reminded me. There was this one movie, you’ll never believe it--” Hyacinth dissolved into laughter so hard tears started forming at the corners of her eyes. “It’s about Snakes. On a Plane.”

“Ex _cuse me?”_ Fury asked. 

She dared a peek at him and hiccupped. He was glowering at her.

“No no,” Fury said in a deathly calm voice, mirroring her earlier words. _“Do_ go on.”

“I can’t-- the thing is, this is a really campy movie, but most of your stuff is just, _stunning,_ and I’m ruining it but there’s one _line_ that’s _iconic,_ and…” she trailed off and took some deep breaths, wiping her face. Right as she was about to dry her hands on her borrowed pants, Fury tossed something to her.

It was a jet black handkerchief with an emblem in a circle. It felt so luxurious that she sighed when she picked it up.

“There is no way I’m snotting on this. It’s soft _as fuck,”_ she said, risking the swear.

“If you don’t tell me what that line was, I’ll get JARVIS to doctor footage of you stealing it from me,” Fury said. She looked up at him with full doubt in her eyes, but he just raised one eyebrow.

“‘I have had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane,’” she recited.

Fury closed his eye and gritted his teeth. “Wipe your damned face,” he said after a full sixty seconds.

“There are a whole bunch of other, better movies,” she offered as she obeyed him. 

“There’d better be. Don’t tell me about them,” he ordered. Fury waited for her to settle down, which involved a liberal amount of handkerchief use, and then he said, “So I hear you’re going by Hyacinth right now.”

She nodded. “It’s not ideal.”

“I’m glad you recognize that. The press likes a scandal, and having a new Avenger whose name came from a reference to HYDRA ain’t gonna fly.”

“Do you have anything in mind?”

He looked surprised. “I expected _you_ would.”

“Everything I can think of reminds me of another universe.” She shrugged, though the action hurt her heart in the same way the original Little Mermaid’s feet hurt with every step. “I can remember my parents’ names, my best friend’s name, and if I wanted to, I could find my name on one of your HYDRA files. Either this is all a dream and it doesn’t matter, or it’s real, and a new name with those connections would be painful.”

Fury inclined his head. “I hear you. I’ve called a meeting for the Avengers tomorrow, I’ll see what I can come up with by then.” 

He tipped his head back and regarded her for a moment. It was very intimidating, and she looked behind her at the door. “Was that a dismissal?” she asked, feeling her face flare red.

“Nah, you’d know,” he said baldly. “I was just waiting for you to tell me you’d be awake by then, and I’d go back to not being real.”

“I didn’t think you’d appreciate me harping on it,” she said, but he stood up and made a sharp noise of rebuttal.

“Bullshit. It wasn’t on your tongue right away. That’s progress. I’ll see you tomorrow, at the Avengers meeting.” Hyacinth caught the implication there, that she should be at the meeting, as a potential Avenger.

She stood and walked over to the door, feeling almost as if she shouldn’t show her back to him--not because he was a threat, but because he was too important a person to turn away from. “See?” Fury said, and she looked over her shoulder at him. _“That_ was a dismissal.”

8888888888

Hyacinth was fully dressed, lying flat on her hospital bed with her two pillows on her head. She’d been like that for at least ten minutes.

“Ughhhh why can’t I wake up? It’s not working!” she groaned to herself. It was day three of this weird dreamscape, and in an hour, she was going to have to go to a room full of people she knew as famous actors, except they were the genuine Avengers, and she was a silver-haired complete fraud.

“Forgive me if I don’t have that much sympathy.”

She screamed, arms flailing out as she scrambled to her feet. The pillows went flying.

“Holy _shit,_ Bruce, who are you, Clint _Fucking_ Barton? I didn’t hear the door!” she swore, pushing her staticky hair away from her face and making sure her clothes weren’t indecent.

“Language,” a second, recognizable voice said. Hyacinth froze with her back to both men.

“No. No you didn’t. You did _not_ bring Captain America to my room in a situation where a woman from any universe would scream and swear at you!” she growled, turning around slowly.

“You have to admit, if you were going to wake up, _that_ would have been the time,” Bruce said, his eyes dancing with held-back laughter. Beside him stood the ridiculously fit and handsome Steve Rogers as portrayed by Chris Evans.

In her humble opinion, there wasn’t much difference between the two men, but that wasn’t the issue in that moment.

“Sir, I am so incredibly sorry that my _ex-friend’s_ behavior caused me to act so out of character. It will never happen again,” she said, opening her eyes as wide and innocently as possible.

“It’s fine,” Rogers said. “I’m sure Clint would appreciate the compliment.”

“Can we, I don’t know, start over?” she whimpered, covering her face with her hands.

“It didn’t occur to me that we’d startle you, I’m sorry,” Bruce said. “Anyway, I wanted to help ease you into that meeting today, so I brought--”

“You brought Captain America as an icebreaker? Even Stark would make fun of you for that, you know that, right?” she broke in. “Actually, though, that’s kind of adorable?” She walked toward them and crossed her arms, laying one finger against her lips. “Psychologically fascinating, even. Does this mean you see all of the Avengers as equal, in your mind? Or did you pick Cap because he’s impossible to dislike?”

“You were right,” Rogers said to Bruce. “She’ll be able to hold her own.” He leaned against the wall, his arms crossed. “Is there anything you need to know?”

“Other than _anything about my supposed superpower?_ Nah, I’m good,” she snapped. Instantly, she regretted it, stopping dead in her tracks and covering her mouth. “Gosh, I’m sorry. I think this has to be the longest I’ve gone without breathing fresh air, or something. It’s messing with the sarcasm center in my brain.”

“I forgot that you’ve seen the least amount of footage of yourself healing people,” Bruce said quietly. “That’s on me. We were finishing up your blood tests; the last lab came in this morning. They had you on something that blocked memory creation. It’s possible they used it every single time they had you using the power.” He was frowning and leaning back against the counter, both hands gripping the edge.

“Or, you know, it’s a dream and I don’t remember ‘cause it’s not real,” she reminded him.

Rogers shot a look over at Bruce, then looked back at Hyacinth. “If I had a nickel for every time I wished this whole thing was a dream…”

“You’d be poor, thanks to inflation,” she said. “Point taken, though. Fury said I should live like it’s real.”

Captain America walked over to her with one of the pillows she’d thrown. “That’s why you came back and hid under your pillows and begged to wake up, right?”

“That’s not very gentlemanly of you,” she said, forcing a smile as she tossed the pillow onto the bed. Inside, she felt a bit stung.

“I can’t afford to be gentlemanly to my teammates,” Rogers said, his tone so earnest that the sentiment behind his words made her heart ache. He reached out slowly, as if giving her a chance to move away from him, and rested one hand on each of her shoulders. “Fury probably ordered you to buck up. I’m just asking you to _try.”_

She didn’t know whether to throw herself at him and sob or push away and scream. Instead, she balled her hands into fists and tried not to cry. “You deserve better,” she gasped out. “I don’t have any idea what I’m supposed to do. I have no memory of ever doing it! I’ve seen what you guys go through, you don’t need a messed up dimensional shard of a teammate, you need good, solid medical tech!”

“Do you trust me?” It was Bruce’s voice, from across the room. 

“Yes,” she said, without hesitation. Her eyes were still screwed shut, but she felt Rogers squeeze her shoulders gently and step back.

“Good,” Bruce said.

“What are you--” Rogers said, sounding alarmed. Bruce hissed in pain, and she opened her eyes in enough time to see his hand moving swiftly, blood dripping from a small knife he must have found in the cupboard.

She rushed over, horrified. He’d put his large hand over the cut on his forearm, but when he saw she was standing beside him, he moved it away. The gash was deep and long, and she reached out even as, mentally, she shrank away from the horror of it.

“I don’t-- what, what do I do?” The words came out stuttered, as if he’d slashed at the room’s air supply instead of his own arm. Bruce was wincing in pain, and she heard Rogers call out for a medic behind them. There was a definite green tinge at Banner’s hairline.

“Heal it,” he gritted out. “I trust you.”

“Oh my God, you are the most amazing _idiot,”_ she muttered even as she steeled herself for whatever was about to happen and laid her hand directly on the cut.

Inside her head, she was chanting to herself _\--oh my god you didn’t wash your hands you’re going to give him an infection he’s going to hulk out and rip you into pieces and he’ll never forgive himself--_ but as soon as she made contact with his injury, something about her _changed._

Captain America was saying something, but he sounded like his voice was filtered through a distant speaker and stretched out, as if it had traversed the distance between the moon and the Earth before reaching her ears. Beneath her hand, Hyacinth could feel every aspect of Bruce’s wound. She could tell how deep it was, how many capillaries he’d severed, and much more. She heard Bruce’s breathing and could tell that he was struggling to control himself not just by the way it sounded, but by the strength of his breath on her skin from their physical proximity. It was invigorating.

All of her senses were dialed up, but it was more than that. Her _knowledge_ was, too. She knew the process of healing his wound, and at the same time, she knew that this knowledge was impossible to translate into English. Somehow she knew that inside her she had the power to speed that process up, as if the signals Bruce’s nerves were sending had triggered the exact right messages in her own body. 

Instinctively, she called forth the energy she’d need from each cell inside her body where it had been lying dormant. Hyacinth channeled that energy to power and accelerate Bruce’s own body’s healing mechanisms. She felt her face flush in waves. The sensation climbed over her hair and jumped off to land on her lower back, tingling along her legs to sink into the base of her feet. The pulsing of magic matched itself to her rapid heartbeat.

By the time she was finished hearing Rogers’ exclamation of surprise, it was all over. Time crashed into her, as if the dilation she’d experienced was the lightning preceding the thunderclap.

She moved her hand away, curling it defensively and noting that the blood felt slick, not tacky as she would have expected had the moment taken as long in reality as it had seemed to.

“See?” Bruce whispered.

The second she looked up into his eyes, the electronic lock on the door chimed and a frantic group of soldiers and doctors piled into the room. Bruce shoved her behind him so fast she had to hook an arm around his waist not to slam her head into the counter.

“I’m fine, she healed me. Check the tape,” he said.

The floor beside them was splattered with droplets of blood, small but vivid.

“Stand down,” one of the soldiers said into his radio.

“I’ve got this under control, but thank you for your swift response,” Rogers said. She peeked out from beside Bruce to see that Captain America was laying on his sheepish charm even as he positioned himself to block the group’s advance. Everyone filed out with a succession of respectful nods and murmurs. The second the door clicked closed, though, Rogers spun on his heel and fixed Bruce with a reproachful look. “Cripes, doc, you want to warn me about something like that next time?”

She couldn’t help the huff of relief, but probably should have stopped herself from resting her forehead on Bruce’s back. He flinched, but immediately spoke.

“You’re fine, I’m just… You’re fine.” 

“I’m _barely_ fine and you’re a complete lunatic,” she said in a small voice.

“You’re welcome,” Bruce said firmly. Rogers burst out into laughter.

“You need a new shirt,” he told Bruce.

Hyacinth pushed off of the counter at an angle away from Bruce and toward the bed. “I started out in a pile on the bed under my pillows, but I think that was just a premonition. Seriously, just… Oh my god,” she said, deciding she didn’t have the coordination to collapse onto it without bouncing back off. She sat down weakly, instead.

“Did you know your hair was glowing?” Rogers said. “Looked golden.”

“Better than green, though,” she said, pointedly staring over at Bruce. He was rolling his sleeve back down, but the fabric had a bloodstain on it.

> _=This is your reminder that the meeting in the Avengers conference room starts in five minutes, which is exactly how long it takes to walk there.=_

“Might want to encrypt that last ten minutes, JARVIS,” Bruce said.

> _=The Director has already confiscated the video, Doctor Banner. He has added a one-on-one meeting for the two of you at--=_

“Yes, thanks, very helpful,” Bruce interrupted.

“Shall we?” Rogers said.

“Can you promise that this will be less eventful than those past ten minutes?” Hyacinth asked from underneath the pillows again.

“Yes,” Bruce said at the same time that Cap said “No” just as definitively.

“Great.”

8888888888

When the three of them got to the conference room, it wasn’t as awkward as she had expected. She did regret putting her silver hair up into a ponytail to cut down on its frizziness from the pillow static, though, because she couldn’t hide behind it.

Black Widow and Hawkeye were already at the table, both dressed in intimidating-looking black workout gear. They were seated near each other and talking quietly, but when she walked in, Barton looked up and offered her a thin smile. Fury and Stark weren’t around, so the only other person at the table was Thor. He seemed preoccupied with his thoughts, but when Captain America called out a greeting from the door, it was as if he’d flipped a switch for the god.

“Ah! Our newest compatriot!” Thor said, shoving back from the table and leaping to his feet. He approached them and for a split second Hyacinth was convinced he was going to grab her into a bear hug. Instead, though, he inclined his head and held out a hand.

Bemused, she laid her hand in his. She barely felt the touch of his lips, but that was because his gaze was intense.

“It is an honor to meet you, _Læknir._ My colleagues are in sore need of your help.”

The implication that he did not need her didn’t slip her notice, but she didn’t hold it against him. A line from Hamilton popped into her mind, and impulsively, she altered it for the situation.

“If it takes HYDRA interference for us to meet, it will have been worth it,” she said, dipping into a pseudo curtsey.

“Hamilton. Nice,” Barton said from the other side of the table.

Thor’s grin was expansive. “Rarely has a Midgardian spoken to me with so much deference. It is greatly appreciated--”

Natasha Romanoff cleared her throat meaningfully.

“--but not necessary, of course,” Thor continued so smoothly that Hyacinth couldn’t tell if he’d changed the end of his sentence because of Black Widow.

Behind them, the door opened and Fury’s voice boomed.

“Take your seats. I see everyone important is here on time, like I asked.”

“Uh,” Rogers paused in the act of pulling his chair out.

“Was there something?”

“Not at all, sir,” Rogers said, settling into his seat. He traced a finger along a grove in the wood of the table. “Just that, you know. You’re wrong.”

“Out of all of you, _you’re_ the one sticking up for Stark? I’m disappointed, Cap.” Everyone around Hyacinth cracked a smile, but Captain America stuck to his guns.

“The team’s a team.”

“I suppose you’re right. JARVIS, do you have an ETA?” Fury said, sighing.

> _=Mr. Stark’s arrival should be expected anywhere from three to ten minutes from now, sir.=_

Fury turned to glare up at one of the ubiquitous speakers that allowed JARVIS access throughout the compound. “Any explanation for that spread?”

> _=None but vagaries of personality, I’m afraid, sir.=_

“I’m sure it has nothing to do with the fact that I’ve made a unilateral decision he’s been pushing back on for a goddamned week,” Fury muttered. He looked up and, presumably prompted by the way everyone was looking at him, flailed his hand towards the middle of the table and commanded, “Talk. Introduce. Mingle.”

With an amused smile, the Black Widow pushed back from the table and walked the length of the three seats that separated her from where Hyacinth was sitting. Then, she thrust out her hand. “Natasha Romanoff. It’s nice to meet you.”

Beside her, Bruce scooted his chair back, which Hyacinth took to mean she had enough space to scoot her own and stand, affording the respect the woman deserved.

“It’s an honor to meet you, Ms. Romanoff. Your strength and intellect are a role model for everyone,” she said, hoping her handshake measured up. Romanoff’s was firm without being painful.

“Thank you,” Romanoff said, her voice thick with amusement. She shot a look over at Hawkeye. “Can I introduce you to Clint _Fucking_ Barton?” she asked Hyacinth. Her expression as she spoke was one of flawless innocence, despite the profanity.

Hyacinth looked around at the other faces at the table, all of which were unsuccessfully holding back laughter. “So when JARVIS said that video was _confiscated,_ what he really meant was he sent it out to everyone’s personal phones to watch before the meeting?”

“Pretty much, yeah,” Barton said, standing. “Thanks for the shoutout.”

She shook his hand while covering her face in embarrassment with her other one.

“For the record, Doctor Banner?” Fury said. “Don’t do that shit again, please.”


	3. Civil Dawn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hyacinth finally sees the real, flesh and blood Tony Stark. He's deeply mistrustful of her, a situation that comes to a head during the rest of the Avengers meeting, especially when she tries to leave that meeting on her own accord.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I'm posting really quickly, but it's a Tony/OC story that had no Tony in it yet! I needed to rectify this!
> 
> I'm just delighted by the reception so far. Marvel fandom never fails to delight me in the way it's so engaged, even for stories that are usually on the fringe.
> 
> Note: So, I think some of Tony's tech in this story is more miniaturized at this time period than is actually demonstrated in the films, but it's a small thing, and probably isn't enough to ruin anything for readers.

### Chapter Three: Civil Dawn

One of the things that Hyacinth had discovered on her first day with a StarkPhone was that verbal communication wasn’t the only way to contact JARVIS. After Fury’s reprimand to Bruce, everyone started talking at once, and Hyacinth hunkered down in her chair and pulled out the phone.

> **((Hy)):** Is it true that Stark isn’t happy with my inclusion in the Avengers?
> 
> **_J.A.R.V.I.S.:_ ** _I have concluded that Mr. Stark’s reticence stems from the desire to have been consulted in the decision, as well as concern about HYDRA influence, due to the short amount of time since your arrival._

“All right, I’m here, thanks for all fifteen notifications everyone!”

Hyacinth hurriedly put her phone down in her lap. Tony Stark was making his way through the room to sit across from Fury at the foot of the table. He was on the opposite side from her, but that meant she could watch him.

In her real life, she’d been a fan of Robert Downey, Jr.’s work. More than that, though, she just _liked_ him. His casting as Tony Stark had seemed as natural as breathing--the actor and the character seemed to share the same kind of flippant, clever sarcasm and effortless charisma. She didn’t let herself get to the point of seeking out every tidbit of information about his personal life, but she did appreciate those things when she got to hear about them.

Mostly, she just thought of herself as one of the many millions of women who thought he was handsome and personable, who liked to watch his movies because it meant more content to enjoy. As for Tony Stark, well… 

She’d always _loved_ Tony Stark. Enough to feel jealous of Pepper Potts a little, even though neither of them were _real._ Except that now, if she never woke up from whatever strange surreal experience she was having, maybe they were. 

The whole situation was overwhelming. In that moment, with her heart thumping as she watched a flesh and blood Tony Stark joke with the other Avengers, Hyacinth made a decision: she was going to have to keep her ridiculous Tony Stark crush a secret. For one thing, no one seated at that table would ever, ever let her hear the end of it, and she didn’t know if she was strong enough to handle ribbing about this particular foible of hers. For another, she knew herself. She’d fall for him if she gave herself any opportunity to. If she did end up getting the chance to join the Avengers, being head over fighting heels for one of its leaders would be a terrible idea. They didn’t deserve that.

By the time Stark sat down, Hyacinth made up her mind. She would hold him at a polite distance, a frigid one if necessary. He’d have to conclude that she was afraid of him, didn’t like him, or even resented him for resisting the idea of letting her join the team. With luck, he’d never guess the real reason.

“Well!” Stark said when he’d finished sitting down. He looked around at everyone, and his gaze settled on Hyacinth. She could feel her blush rising, but there wasn’t a force on either Earth that would have stopped it, especially not when he narrowed his eyes just slightly, tipped his head to the side, and said, simply, “Hi.”

Her soft, “Hi,” escaped before she could prevent it.

“You know, the whole silver hair and eyes thing looks more cold in pictures than in person,” he said, holding a hand up as if he were framing her face with it.

“When you’re finished, of course,” Fury said with a canyon of sarcasm.

“Please, go on,” Stark said, resting one hand on the other as if ready to listen to the Director. When Fury opened his mouth to speak, though, Stark snapped his fingers, pointing back behind him. “Except, weren’t there supposed to be two new Avengers here? What happened to that other guy?” His face darkened, tone shifting from playful insolence to sarcastic, barely restrained anger. “Oh, right, he tried to _kill_ _me_ and ran off. Why hold this meeting now, Fury? Why not wait till both of your new assets are seated at the table?”

“You weren’t the only one he tried to kill, Tony,” Bruce rumbled from beside Hyacinth.

“Doesn’t that just prove my point?” Tony asked, looking at his teammates as if arguing a case.

“Did you read the files? Did you watch the video I just sent? If she was going to put us in danger, _that_ was the opportunity,” Fury said, his precise diction acting like an intensity modifier.

“I watched some of them, sure,” Stark said, leaning back in his chair and using the table as leverage to make it spin. “What matters isn’t what she can do, it’s what she _will_ do.” On the word ‘will,’ he stopped his spin after a full revolution with a loud fist on the table. “That’s the uncertainty you’re willing to put in battle beside us.” Stark stood and pointed out the window. “And I think there should be more of an assessment period so we can focus on the HYDRA goons we’re fighting out there.”

He left out ‘instead of the HYDRA goon in here,’ but she doubted anyone at the table missed the implication.

“Impressive display of passion,” Fury said. He didn’t look impressed.

Stark let out a sound of deep disgust and threw himself back onto the chair.

“Tell me, Stark, if you’re so interested in team unity, why haven’t you read the memos my office sent about this meeting? Natasha, what’d the last one say?” Fury asked.

After pulling it up on her phone, Romanoff started reading: “This meeting is to assess first impressions meeting the healer rescued from HYDRA last week, and decide whether there’s a path forward for the Avengers as a group to include her abilities. On the agenda: 1. What would each member need in order to feel safe trusting her, both as a--”

“That’s probably sufficient, thank you,” Fury interrupted. He paused, drawing the silence out long enough that even Hyacinth felt like shrinking down in her chair. “Well?” the director challenged.

“All right, you caught me, I didn’t read it.” Stark’s chin was lifted; he was stubborn and unapologetic. “Though, in my defense, I would have fallen asleep after the fourth word. Who writes this stuff?”

“To be honest, sir, the sheer volume of memos can sometimes end up hiding the ones that are--”

Stark cut in. “Cap, I don’t need your damage mitigation, ‘crew resource management’ crap right now.” 

“No, that’s exactly what you need. You need that, and you need _real_ damage mitigation.” Fury snapped, clearly angry now.

Hyacinth had been watching Stark’s face nearly the entire time, even though what was written across it was a manifest distrust of her very existence. At first, she’d watched him because she thought she could use that distrust and disgust to her advantage. It hurt, and like a doomed character stabbed in the chest with a spear, by watching him argue against her inclusion she was placing both hands on the shaft and hauling it deeper.

Parallel to that pain was understanding. Tony Stark was digging in his heels, but he’d screwed up. She could tell that he was in an untenable position, just like Rogers could. There was a path here for her to both help him _and_ pull the spear. Hyacinth decided to take it.

She stood, immediately feeling all eyes on her. She kept her tone calm but firm as she said, “According to the agenda, it looks like we’re on track. Is it time to hear from someone else, at this point? Mr. Stark’s opinions seem very clearly stated.”

“Since I’ve spent significant time speaking with her,” Bruce said, swiftly standing and walking around to a position behind her chair. “I have some things to add.” 

“Please,” Fury said, nodding. At the other end of the table, Stark blew out a loud, exasperated sigh.

Hyacinth smiled weakly at Bruce, and he tucked in her chair as she sat back down. He remained behind her as he said, “Of course, I’d be happy to write up a report, instead.” The others at the table traded amused glances at this.

As she knew he would, Bruce looked uncomfortable. Her neck ached to look at him, so she closed her eyes and just listened. Inside, she silently thanked him for putting himself in that position to support her.

“You might not know this, but she has no memory of what HYDRA did to her. Not the process of being ripped from her own universe, not the efforts to put her back together, not the sessions where they deliberately injured people to force her to heal them.”

Hyacinth gasped. She’d thought about that possibility, but hearing it was something else. It made her sick.

“You can tell by her reaction that she didn’t even know that _happened,”_ Bruce said, sounding like he’d looked down at her. She didn’t want to see what expression he might have on his face, now. 

“For all intents and purposes, this woman fell asleep in a world where she watched videos of the Avengers, and then woke up in one of our facilities, with no interim memory,” Bruce said. His clever phrasing made her smile on the inside. “I don’t know if that means she’s more trustworthy than if she remembered more. I do know how it felt to blame innocent people for telling the truth about what happened to me. I promised myself not to do that again, no matter the situation, and I won’t. I think she deserves a chance.”

Bruce’s chair knocked into hers as he sat back down, and she looked over and mouthed a ‘thank you.’ His returning ‘your welcome’ looked heartfelt.

“Cap?” Fury prompted.

“What can I say? That I know it’s possible to be a good person and be corrupted by HYDRA into doing bad things?”

“Bucky,” Hyacinth whispered. Because of the silence of the room, it was audible, against her intentions. She looked up and caught Rogers’ eye. “I’m sorry.”

“How do you know about him? Where did you find that information?” Stark asked, his voice rising. “Did you work for SH--”

“I worked at a hospital as a registered nurse,” she interrupted. “At a psychiatric ER. I don’t know if that is in the file or not, because I don’t know anything about the other version of myself.”

“She worked as a nursing assistant in a psych ward,” Barton said, holding up a paper file. He slid it across the polished table surface toward Stark.

“You just happened to have this with you, for the meeting?” Stark asked, drily. He didn’t touch the file.

“Yeah. I came prepared,” Barton said in an even, challenging tone.

At that, loud voices erupted from various people. Hyacinth lifted up her StarkPhone and typed something out to JARVIS, desperate to do something to break the tension.

> **((Hy)):** I need an exit strategy, I’m going to freak out and burst into tears or throw myself out of the window pretty soon here
> 
> **_J.A.R.V.I.S.:_ ** _Walk out. I’ll ensure the doors and elevators work._
> 
> **((Hy)):** You’re kidding! They’ll freak out.
> 
> **_J.A.R.V.I.S.:_ ** _They already are. You will have Dr. Banner, Captain Rogers, and the Director on your side. That should be enough to ensure your safety. Get up right now and walk out._
> 
> **((Hy)):** I’m going to tell them it’s your idea!
> 
> **_J.A.R.V.I.S.:_ ** _You have my full support._

Hyacinth sat and stared at his message, listening to the angry voices at the table around her until she took a deep breath and stood up.

“My god, will you stop? I’d send myself back home right now if I could! I have no intention of being the source of conflict for you!” she said, walking around the table toward the door.

“What is she doing? Hey! HYDRA girl! What are you doing?” Stark asked, obviously incredulous.

She sped up, making it to the door without being stopped by anyone, not even Fury.

“Hy?” Bruce called out as she crossed through the doorway.

“I’m just going back to the room,” she promised.

“Like _hell!”_ Stark’s voice rang out. She sped for the elevator and heard him swear, behind her. When she got inside and turned around, she saw he was holding something red and metallic, but it must not have worked the way he expected it to. Predictably, the object flew over to hold the elevator doors open at the very last second.

> _=Command override operational.=_

She somehow just _knew_ JARVIS said it for her benefit, to tell her he wasn’t going to go against his boss. Sure enough, the next thing she heard was Stark’s voice ordering his AI to open the elevator doors for him. He got in, retrieved his device, and the doors closed.

“JARVIS, take this down half a floor and stop,” Stark ordered, obviously _furious._

He glared at her until the car stopped moving. His plan was clever, placing them in what was essentially a small cell where he could interact with her but she had no means to escape. It made her strangely delighted to see that the ‘real’ Tony was as smart as the fictional one. She opened her mouth to say something (though she had no idea what), but he held up his hand.

“Just--” He’d said that word between clenched teeth, and broke off speaking right after, as if he’d realized the level of anger was verging on frightening. “Give me a second.”

“Not like I have anywhere in either universe to be,” she said snidely, turning her back on him. Once she’d done so, she covered her face with both hands for a few seconds, trying to calm down. The dichotomy of being pleased to be in Stark’s presence but upset at how much he didn’t trust her was A Lot. Hyacinth took her StarkPhone out, intending to ask JARVIS if he had any new bright ideas.

What she didn’t expect was Stark himself to snatch it out of her hands.

“No! Hey!” she said. _Shit, shit!_ she thought to herself. _I can’t tell JARVIS to wipe it, because THAT wouldn’t look suspicious at all._

“I refuse to believe you’ve hacked my AI,” Stark said, holding it up after reading her messages. He looked gobsmacked.

“I didn’t.”

“Then how do you even explain this? JARVIS?”

Stark sounded like a father who was completely stunned that his son had the audacity to disobey him.

“Don’t take it out on JARVIS. He’s there to help, right? So I asked him for help.”

“To escape _my meeting!”_ Stark said, his eyes widening at her.

“Oh, bullshit!” she snapped. “That was manifestly _not_ ‘your’ meeting. You couldn’t have wanted to be there any less if they’d been teaching hieroglyphics.”

Stark crossed his arms, leaned up against the wall, tipped his head to the side and looked at her. His eyes were cold. “What’s your association with the Avengers where you came from?”

“It’s obvious to anyone with eyes that you don’t have patience for things you aren’t interested in! I don’t have to be besties with the Avengers to know that.” she said, stepping back to feel the comfort of the cold metal of the elevator car on her back. “I’m sure it was the case even before the suit.”

“Explain Bucky.”

“Do you have an easel, a Russian to English dictionary, and three hours?” she asked, feeling rebellious. She saw immediately that this had been a mistake, because though Stark still looked angry, her words sparked a change in him that made her uneasy. He stopped looking at her in abject confusion and fury, and instead with almost scientific curiosity. “In all seriousness, I’m a history nerd who works in mental health.” she said, trying to do damage control. “The psychological trauma of what HYDRA put him through was worth studying, what little I could find about it.”

Her deflection didn’t work as thoroughly as she’d hoped, because that burning curiosity he was looking at her with didn’t diminish. Being under his scrutiny made her blush, and that way lay much danger. In an attempt to deflect a little, she tugged her hair tie out and shook her head to let her hair fall around her face. She felt less exposed that way.

Hyacinth glanced over to the imperfect mirror of the elevator wall--and stared, stunned. The compact mirror she’d borrowed the other day hadn’t been very big, so she hadn’t gotten the full effect of her appearance change. 

Even though she was in the midst of a huge argument with Stark, all of that fell away. The metal didn’t have the resolution of a true mirror, but even slightly distorted and blurry, her eyes were shockingly different from her previous self. She turned more fully toward the reflection and shook her head. Hyacinth was almost surprised when the silver haired woman reflected in front of her did the same thing.

“What?” Stark asked. It was a bit petulant, but it wasn’t angry, so she wasn’t about to complain.

“I can’t get over this,” she murmured, leaning her head sideways and lifting up a chunk of hair to see that the hair underneath was still silver.

“You look different, in this universe?” He stepped up behind her, meeting her gaze in their reflections.

“Yeah,” she said, wishing she wasn’t so _aware_ of him. It wasn’t normal; she was certain he was going to pick up on it. She needed to push him away. “You’d have known that if you looked at the files.”

She watched the words hit him, saw the wall of defensiveness shoot back into place, and sighed inwardly.

> _=The Director would like to know if the two of you intend to return to the meeting. He says there is still more on the agenda, including your name, Hyacinth.=_

Because Stark was apparently some kind of magnet she was unable to pull away from, she’d been looking at his reflection when JARVIS had mentioned her. Stark mouthed the name, lips curving into an appreciative smile before he schooled it away.

The pleasure in that smile did things to her insides.

Because her future mental health in this dream reality depended on hiding that reaction, Hyacinth latched onto the obvious.

“You didn’t even know my _name?”_ she said, spinning around to look at him. He was closer than she’d thought he would be, and, perhaps distracted by his own reaction to her, Stark reached out to steady her after her angry, unsteady turn.

Hyacinth backed up as if his touch could burn her. In a flash of anger of her own, she fought back the only way she could.

“Oh, what do I care? You probably think it’s a sign of my inherent villainy. _HY_ acinth, that’s where it came from, you see,” she said, lifting her chin. “That’s what was on my chart. HY Doe. You look so ready to hate me that you’d probably go question the nurse who changed it for the audacity of _humanizing_ me.”

“I don’t hate you. I just don’t like how you’ve managed to thoroughly wrap both Bruce _and_ JARVIS around your little finger so soon. You know what files I _did_ look at? Hmm?” Stark asked, suddenly animated with energy. He tapped away at her phone, fingers flying as he sifted through some sort of database in search of something. He grunted when he found it, and tapped a few more times. “There. Look at it. It’s the foundation of their research. The files I spent more time on weren’t _yours,_ you were the least studied one of the five. I looked at these three, specifically who they were in their original universes. I was searching for a connection.”

She took the phone and started reading. It was hard to concentrate at first with Stark staring at her, but the information in the file soon captured her attention.

It looked like HYDRA had found a pattern in the kinds of powers they could spawn in the swapped bodies they ripped out of alternate universes. The word ‘bodies’ was opportune, because it had taken over a year to ensure the subjects lived past a week or so.

The first few were factory workers, then the next solid six months were nuclear power plant employees. The pattern HYDRA had discovered was a correlation between the type of work a person did and the manifestation of their powers. All thirty nuclear power workers had irradiated at least one HYDRA goon before they perished, if not many more. Not with their presence, either-- none of the transplanted test subjects had died of radiation poisoning. They’d _caused_ it in others.

The only reason HYDRA had given up on that line of attack had been that none of them had ever remained healthy enough to be used as a weapon.

Shortly after giving up on their literal nuclear option, HYDRA’s scientists had shifted to mental healthcare workers, specifically nurses and doctors.

Hyacinth looked up at Stark.

“What were the other four subjects’ powers, the ones I was held with?” she asked.

“Two could wipe memories. One seemed to be able to cause hallucinations in others, like dreams. You can see why I’m worried now, can’t you?” he said, quietly urgent. “Okay, so you’re a healer. Is that _all_ you can do?”

Hyacinth stepped back. She held up the phone. “So this, combined with what you said before you handed it to me-- you think I’m affecting their minds? How would that even work with JARVIS? Have you thought this through, or are you just feeling steamrolled by Fury?”

She started to look away but saw him pull something from his pocket and slip it onto his finger. It was gold, and she just _knew_ it was Iron Man tech of some sort. She didn’t even blame him, not really. What would Iron Man do when stuck in an elevator with a threat like her? Knock her out, probably. What else _could_ he do? If she could really mess with his mind, if she’d already altered Bruce Banner’s mind, and already somehow fucked with JARVIS, then she was a huge risk to the team.

If she didn’t want to get hit in the head or zapped by whatever was in that ring, she was going to have to think fast.

“JARVIS, does this thing have gas masks?”

She’d turned her face up to the ceiling as she spoke, and seconds after she did, she heard a sequence of smooth, metallic clicks. They were immediately recognizable as the sounds Stark’s Iron Man gear made.

> _=This elevator comes standard with gas masks, yes.=_

“Stay quiet and turn around,” Stark gritted out. She did so, seeing that he now stood with his palm extended toward her. The center of his red-gold gauntlet was glowing. He was probably seconds from firing on her.

“Gas me unconscious and drop the mask for Stark,” Hyacinth said all in a rush.

> _=A clever solution to the standoff. Stand by, then.=_

“Wait, JARVIS--” Stark shouted, but it was too late.

The hiss of released gas was louder than she expected. Hyacinth supposed that in movies, an elevator never really was a closed space, not with all the cameras and lights they had to use for filming. The mask dropped in front of Stark, and to his credit, he put it on. It was a slick design, showing his whole face, so she could see the deep frown he exhibited.

“Tell Bruce I know he won’t be able to visit,” she said before kneeling down in the cloud of gas and taking a deep breath. It wasn’t too unpleasant, and Hyacinth had the distinct pleasure of seeing regret on Tony Stark’s face as she passed out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Left in a section that in retrospect is out of character for someone as decisive as Tony, so I've removed it.


	4. Sunrise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “There are no sides, Hyacinth. There’s one side, and you’re on it.”

### Chapter Four: Sunrise

She was in a cell when she woke up. That was her first impression, but her second was more generous; it wasn’t a ‘cell’ as much as a fancy brig. Most of the improvement came from the fact that one of the walls of this room was a large picture window looking out over a spectacular view of New York City. That another wall included a single bathroom stall, and a third was a solid row of glowing bars was almost beside the point, with a view like that. She got up and walked over to the window. The room was fairly high up in the building, which she assumed had to be the Avengers tower, rebuilt after the Chitauri attack on New York.

> _=Good morning, Hyacinth. Doctor Banner requested that I patch you through on a video call when you were ready, please let me know when to do so.=_

“Hey, JARVIS. Surprised to hear you,” she said.

> _=Mr. Stark’s suspicion of tampering was waylaid by a full diagnostic and a dose of common sense.=_

“That’s awfully seditious of you to say, J,” she said. 

She walked into what she’d thought was a bathroom space and saw it was a changing room instead, complete with a bench and shelf to help her get dressed in private. Its obvious purpose made her wonder how she’d come to be dressed in her current clothing. Hyacinth pulled on the pajama shirt to look at the tag, and saw that it had a laundry mark she recognized from the pillowcase in her hospital room. That meant there was a solid chance she’d at least been medically examined and dressed before being drop-kicked into the MCU’s version of a time out room.

The pajamas were far from comfortable, though, so she started looking for something else to wear. Hanging from a non-removable hanger beside the shelf was a garment bag, but what she found inside it had her speechless.

Inside were at least three outfits’ worth of high-end, well-made clothing in beautiful colors, along with delicates of equal quality. She’d already picked out a combination of flattering jeans and a silky, ice-blue and silver shirt to wear when she realized what she was doing.

They were probably a peace offering to make up for the fact that they had her locked up.

The clothes had to be from Stark.

Had he gotten Pepper Potts to pick them out? Hyacinth was shorter and differently busted than Potts, so they probably weren’t _hers,_ but she was still horrified. Who else’s money could be used for something like this? Who else would have spent so much on a woman rescued from a HYDRA facility, and for what other reason would they do it, other than guilt?

Hyacinth went back out into the main room wearing the exact same cheap, scratchy pajama set she’d walked in with.

> _=Forgive my lack of response, but I sought to give you some privacy. Were the clothes provided not to your liking?=_

“I’m not wearing Stark’s guilty conscience,” she said, shaking out the comforter she’d slept under to make the bed. “You can tell Bruce I’m ready for his call.”

> _=Understood.=_

The video screen lifted from the table bolted to the floor across from her bed. As soon as it was finished rising into place, it flickered to life and revealed Bruce.

“Hey, good to see you,” he said, sipping from a take-out cup. Bruce had shown up with one at the hospital room the day before, too. He’d promised to take her to get some for herself when she was cleared to leave the building.

“So if you have a tea from Mario’s, that means they didn’t stick you in one of these to wait out whatever crap they think I did to your brain, so that’s good.” Hyacinth watched his face to see how he reacted. A guilty look would mean someone had brought it to him while he was confined.

Bruce shook his head. “No, nothing like that. I’m in the lab, see?” The camera picked up and he showed her a view of a bank of computers and other various machinery in a slick, glass-walled room.

“Careful, I might sell that intel to HYDRA for a silk shirt,” she told him.

“Come on,” Bruce said, looking unhappy.

“I’m sorry, I don’t want to put you in the middle. He had you first, so I guess I’ll try to valiantly live without you!”

“There are no sides, Hyacinth. There’s one side, and you’re on it.”

“Okay, Cap,” she jibed. Bruce’s answering frown was hardly intimidating, but his eyes were sad, and it made her feel awful for teasing him about something he had nothing to do with. “All right, I’m sorry. Truly. And actually, I was thinking about that, the team thing.”

“Go on?”

“So you guys need to be able to trust me, so I’m sure there’ve been a cadre of former SHIELD agents going over the HYDRA tapes showing me healing. And, since I haven’t woken up out of this crazy dream yet, but I still don’t remember anything from those sessions, we’re pretty sure they dosed me with something, right?”

“More than pretty sure,” Bruce said, sitting up straighter. “Tox screens proved it.”

That threw her. She’d kept the dream theory burning like a candle in the back of her mind, right up until Bruce’s statement about proof snuffed it out.

“Hyacinth?”

“This is real.”

Bruce almost dropped his tea. He fumbled it twice, and on behalf of the paperwork on his desk, she was grateful for the steadfastness of Mario’s cup lids. “Yes it is,” he finally said.

“I should have JARVIS calculate the probability of this happening. It’s got to be more than astronomical. It’s got to be--” The words dusted in her mouth. 

The Chitauri were real. Mjöllnir, the Rainbow Bridge, Loki’s scepter? Real. HYDRA, Bucky’s metal arm, the Red Room and the depraved jerks who trained the Black Widow, all real. And if all of that was real…

“God, _Bruce.”_

Stark’s cameras were good. She could see how ashen he’d turned, watching her work it all out. Watching her _realize._

“Don’t,” he said, barely audible. He met her eyes, clearly saw how she was holding herself right on the edge of emotion, and added, “Not now.”

She could breathe again. “Okay.” If he was asking, she could do that. Her mind turned to what she’d started to tell him, the thing she’d come up with in the middle of the night when she’d woken in a strange room and been too fearful to get up and explore it.

“You had an idea about the team?” he prompted.

“Sort of,” Hyacinth said. “You’re not going to like it.”

“I already don’t like where you are, so if you think this will help--”

“I do. Here’s the thing: HYDRA does not give a fuck.”

Bruce burst out laughing. “True.”

“So why would they care if someone remembers their experiments?” She could see the way he took in her words, slowly nodding, encouraging her. “I think the memory thing is a side effect. I think if you’re going to screw someone up by ripping them into another universe, you need a way to ensure they don’t use their newly granted powers to hurt you. One of the ways to do that is to make sure they don’t remember what they left behind while you torture them to discover their new superpowers. ‘Cause if they remember what they’ve lost, it might make them mad.” She smiled. “I wonder how long it took HYDRA to realize that, honestly. How many lives it took.”

“There’s a six week period between the factory and nuclear plant workers where there’s zero data, no files. The numbering system implies nothing was removed,” Bruce said, looking up as if searching on the shelves of his memories. “Tony thought they might have been waiting for a sick scientist or something, but maybe they took that time to perfect the memory serum. Nice deduction.”

She grinned. “Thanks.” 

“Good, now stop there.”

“Sorry, Doctor,” Hyacinth said. “But-- do you think you guys could synthesize some?”

“No.” 

“I’m just saying, if Stark’s struggling with trusting me, and there’s a concern that I might have more than just healing ability, you could test that in a safe environment with the--

_“No!”_

Bruce’s vehement response didn’t surprise her, but the fact that he hung up on her did.

“JARVIS, get him back! Shit-- I didn’t make him _angry_ angry, did I? I would never forgive myself if-- JARVIS?”

> _=It appears that Doctor Banner is on his way up to your room.=_

“They’ll never let him in!” Hyacinth said, leaping to her feet and looking down at herself. “And I’m wearing pajamas!” She walked over to the bars, leaning as close to them as she dared, listening. “JARVIS, get Rogers, will you?”

> _=A good idea.=_

“Yeah, he’s right, it is a good idea.” It was Clint Barton’s voice. Coming from behind her.

“What!” Completely forgetting about the video screen, Hyacinth spun around completely expecting to see Hawkeye somewhere in the room. When she didn’t, she started looking up, instead. There was a head-shaped hole in the ceiling near the bars, but his voice had come from behind her, so...

“Don’t touch the bars!”

Hyacinth jumped back. The voice was definitely behind her.

“Turn around and look at the screen? Those bars have an alarm that brings some goons.”

“Aren’t those goons on your side?” she asked, embarrassed to see that, yep, an image of Hawkeye was displayed right where Bruce’s had been. Barton looked like he was walking through some kind of hallway in the tower while talking to her on his phone. 

“Why did you immediately assume I was somewhere in the ceiling? And it’s _our_ side,” Barton corrected. His words made her feel a strange sort of belonging.

“Did Steve Rogers put something in your kool-aid last night?” She wondered if the real Avengers Tower had an alarm that went off when Bruce went green. There weren’t any alarms that she could hear, either from the hallway outside or in Barton’s audio.

“Don’t change the subject--I want to know why the Clint in your universe spends so much time in air ducts,” Barton said. His tone made her think of a roughly affectionate older brother type, and it made her want to play along.

“Look, I don’t want to be in a prison cell, no matter how nice the view is, so I was already looking for flaws,” she said.

“Go on,” he told her, getting onto an elevator.

“So when I heard you, I thought, what good is a cell design if the vents are big enough for a burly archer?”

_“Burly?”_

“Have you _seen_ your arms?”

Barton’s grin in response was infectious. “I like you.”

“Because I gave you a compliment?” she asked, still confused.

Outside her door, there were the sounds of running footsteps and an elevator ding. Barton’s elevator was still moving, so that ding was not his.

“Sure. And by the fact that my existing scars give certain people in my life enough nightmares already,” he said. “Besides, I’ve been mind controlled before. It was _not_ subtle.”

“There are at least twenty-five different flavors of Oreos, you know that, right?”

He smiled, but shook his head. “I know not everyone’s the same, and I’m good with taking the chance on you. You don’t get motion sick, do you?” Before she could answer, the camera seemed to fall away and then jitter a bit. Now her view was that of the reflective elevator wall, and she saw that his phone was strapped to his arm. He was dressed in the same sort of stuff he’d wear in battle scenes.

“What are you doing?” 

His voice echoed a bit now that he wasn’t speaking directly at the mic in his phone. “You know, it took you a long time to ask that. I don’t think that room is good for you,” he said. Her stomach lurched a bit as he brought his arm back into position to show his face. “I think it’s time for a rescue.” He jumped his eyebrows up at her, then waved with a gloved hand, ending the call.

“JARVIS, what did Captain America _do_ last night after I passed out?!”

Her door burst open and a group of black-clad men and women filed in, standing with their backs to her against the bars. They were faced away from her, even though she was supposed to be the threat. That meant they were facing toward what they perceived the real threat was--probably Bruce.

Her heart contracted in her chest. When she’d watched the films, it had always been hard to watch Bruce Hulk out on purpose despite the agony he went through both physically and mentally, but now? Now, seconds after realizing he really did go through that for real, she’d made him angry. Some friend she’d turned out to be.

So, if this was really her life, now, how could she support these people who were so clearly willing to accept her? Hyacinth looked down at herself. First things first-- her baggy pajamas were a liability.

Hyacinth shot a look at the assembled soldiers and the open door. None of them seemed to care about her, so she slowly backed toward the changing room. Right as she got to the opening where she could disappear from their view, a loud alarm started going off in the hallway, making her jump. She took that opportunity to rush over to the clothes bag, ripping out a pair of black jeans, a black bra, and a form-fitting black tank top. She ignored the silky shirt that was clearly meant to go with the top, ripping off the clothes she was wearing as fast as possible and dressing in the new things instead.

They fit so perfectly that she got angry about it. Stark had read _that_ part of her file, it seemed. Her conscience objected to this characterization, though. _He probably had someone staff that out, you know. You might be mad about him not trusting you, but he has valid reasons._

With the door open, the elevator ding was loud enough for her to hear it even in the changing area. Hyacinth waited, out of sight, and listened.

“Where is she? Removed from the room?” It was Bruce, and he sounded upset, but not on the verge of fury. She was just about to rush out and show him she was fine when she heard another voice. Stark’s.

“Am I supposed to think this _isn’t_ you affected by some sort of mind magic?”

“What proof do you need, Tony? You want us to work on cramming her back where she came from? Or maybe we just leave her on the doorstep so HYDRA can scoop her up, use her healing powers for themselves? Hmm?” Bruce asked in his characteristic higher-pitched, not quite whining reprimand. “You think I don’t understand what this is like? You can’t put what Pandora unleashed back into the box, Tony. If there was a way, I wouldn’t be here.”

She wanted to hear what Stark was going to say next, but there was a weird tapping noise coming from under the bench, so Hyacinth walked over. When she looked, she saw that there was a grate underneath.

“So, that vent thing? Turns out it was not so crazy a suggestion,” Barton whispered. “Problem is, the bench is on just the wrong spot. Think you could scoot it, but… quietly?”

“Weirdest dream ever, honestly,” Hyacinth muttered to herself.

“If this was a dream, I wouldn’t be stuck in a hole in your floor, so can you help me out?” Barton hissed in a snarky whisper.

“Fine!” She changed her stance to one that would help her lift with her back and managed to pick one end of it. She pivoted and tugged it, leaving just enough space to pull the grate up without making any noise. It probably didn’t matter, because she could still hear Stark’s raised voice out in the hallway as he argued with Bruce.

Barton’s exit from the floor vent was the kind of slick move that would have been in slow-mo for the movie.

“Now what?” she whispered as he took a tiny black square out of his pocket. Barton reached up to stick it to the top of the partition board that made up the changing room wall.

“Now we wait for Nat.”

They stayed in the changing room area and monitored the door on a mirror he slipped up over the edge of the wall. Stark and Bruce walked in, still arguing. Right as she was afraid that Bruce was going to lose control, Steve Rogers walked up and asked what the problem was.

Barton turned to her and asked, “You don’t have anything breakable in that room, do you?”

“Why?”

He shrugged in a way that did not inspire confidence. 

“Did you move her, Tony?” Rogers was asking.

“No! I can’t believe you can’t see how much she’s divided us in the past twenty-four hours!” Stark’s hands were both buried in his pockets, which she thought was strange given how much he usually moved them around when he talked.

“He’s got Iron Man tech in there, guaranteed,” she whispered to Barton.

“Yep,” he whispered back.

“I don’t think we’re divided at all, Tony. I think you’re the only one not on board,” Rogers said. He sounded sad.

“You holding meetings without me, Steve?” 

“Get ready,” Barton murmured, giving over control of the mirror. She was grateful she didn’t drop it, but holding it in place meant she couldn’t look over to see what he was doing.

“You were always invited, Tony.”

That must have been some kind of a signal, because as Hyacinth struggled to hold the mirror pole still, she watched one of the soldiers lined up along the bars suddenly turn, drop the two goons beside them with two swift moves, and rip off the helmet they were wearing.

Bright copper hair cascaded down beside the Black Widow’s face as she swiftly dispatched two more soldiers. Both of whom fell so quickly that Hyacinth was certain they’d been drugged rather than hurt.

“Tranqs?” she asked over her shoulder to Barton. He took the pole and nodded, handing her a pair of safety glasses. She put them on as she watched him hop up onto the bench and fire an arrow with a small square lashed to the shaft. It sank into the far wall, and Hyacinth was stunned to see how perfectly it was lined up with the first black square he’d placed.

“You do _not_ get enough credit for how badass that is,” she said.

Barton’s answer was to flip a jaunty salute toward her right before he slid out into the middle of the room on his side, firing a third arrow in the direction of the bars. Hyacinth couldn’t see what was going on anymore, but she heard Captain America shout.

“Time to move!”

She knew she shouldn’t, not if Hawkeye had handed her _eye protection,_ but Hyacinth jumped up onto the bench, trying to see what was happening. She caught a glimpse of the back of Cap’s shield pushing a half-geared Iron Man out the door. It looked like Stark was only acquiescing because Romanoff and Bruce were dragging the unconscious bodies of some of the soldiers out as well.

In the next second, she was lifted bodily off of the bench and scooped against Barton’s vest at the same time she saw movement out the window. Suddenly, there was a monumental sound of shattered glass and maybe even some thunder. The shriek of groaning metal lasted for a terrifying few seconds, and then something gave way. Hyacinth lifted her head to peek.

The bars were being _dragged out the window_ by a stout metal cable. Just short of the opening, though, the cable released, and the twisted bars skidded to a halt. Strangely, the center of the room was filled with thousands of pieces of glass suspended in midair by some sort of force field. It was being projected by the three black squares Hawkeye had so expertly placed.

“One sec,” Barton said, helping her up. He made a gesture that she should cover her head, and seconds later, there was another sound of glass falling. He must have released the force field, she understood.

When Hyacinth lifted her head again, she saw Thor come swooping into the room via the empty window space, hammer first. 

“Friends! Are you unharmed?”

Barton looked down at her feet. “Shit, I knew we forgot something.” Without giving her a chance to object, he tucked his bow back into the holster at his back, and picked her up, walking over across the floor of broken glass to stand next to Thor. The god kicked away a small place for her to stand, but Barton whispered something to him that Hyacinth couldn’t hear and didn’t put her down.

A controlled burst of energy blasted a hole in the wall beside the door, followed by a second, lower one. Iron Man walked through the space, raising a gauntleted hand to lift his faceplate.

“Really? Thor?” he asked, frowning.

“I am weary of watching my fellow warriors suffer from that which I do not,” Thor said. He strode into the changing room area and came back out with the heavy metal bench in one hand. Then he set it down next to Hawkeye. Barton set her down feet first on the bench. “She is a healer, Stark. Let her join us.”

“Some healer--she’s ripped us apart!” Stark gritted out, thrusting his pointed finger around the room at all of them.

“No, you did that,” Romanoff said, stripping off the thick bulletproof vest she’d worn to fit in with the guards. “You’re pissed. I get it. Fury made a decision on our behalf, you didn’t like it, so you put her in here. For our safety.”

“Turns out we didn’t like the decision you made on _our_ behalf, either--” Bruce said, raising his eyebrows at the amount of glass on the floor as he moved to stand beside Romanoff.

“So we’re taking her back out. For our health.” Captain America said, walking across the glass past Bruce, Romanoff, and Stark to hold out a hand for her.

Hyacinth offered an apologetic smile and then stepped back on the bench; one tiny, consequential step away. Then she raised her hands in surrender and looked directly at Tony Stark.

“If you need me to stay locked up, even after all of this, I’ll do it,” she said, feeling the prickles of tears start behind her eyes. “I want to earn the trust of the team. _All_ of the team.”

Stark went through a cascade of emotions as they stood there in silence looking at each other. Before her words, he’d looked angry, but the second he realized what she was offering, he looked stunned, then confused. Stark took a step back, tipping his head to the side and looking at her as if seeing her for the first time. Hyacinth willed him to trust her, shouting the words in her head as they looked at each other.

After a few seconds of that penetrating, perceptive look, he took a big, deep breath and looked around the room, turning his body as he glanced from one teammate to another. When he’d gotten through the circuit of them, he fixed his gaze on her.

“You all trust her?” he asked, his expressive brown eyes locked onto hers, as if the important part wasn’t their answer, but her reaction to it. Every single person in the room said ‘yes.’

Hyacinth couldn’t move, couldn’t look away. This was the Tony Stark she’d always loved most, not just the arrogant brilliance but the bared soul. Hearing the emphatic answers around her made her break down, but, caught in his gaze, she could only let the tears well up and drop.

Stark saw this and his expression changed so slightly she didn’t think anyone who wasn’t sharing that look would have caught it. It was as if she could _see_ his mind change, signalled by all the microscopic shifts of emotion that drove muscle movement. He went from mistrust to grudging acceptance, right in front of her.

“All right then. That’s good enough for me,” he said, reeling back as if he were suddenly exhausted. A wry grin flashed across his face, and then he turned toward Captain Rogers. “I’m billing you for the glass.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay I'm a complete freaking DORK for RDJ sometimes but if you want to know what I mean about subtle changes of emotion on Tony's face, check this video out. You don't have to watch more than 30 seconds of it, but here's a description of what I mean (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ddk9ci6geSs):
> 
> So at around 20 seconds in, Tony's looking at the Stark Expo model, and right after he curls his hand up and looks through it, he stares at the model, then this fraction of a fraction of amusement/happiness crosses his face, before it's gone. I think the only explanation for how subtle it is, is that RDJ had a series of thoughts Tony cycled through, and when he got to the happy one, it shifted his face that way for a tiny bit before his thoughts moved on. It's really subtle.


	5. Early Morning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hyacinth gets a new name and goes from keeping Tony at an 'artificial distance' to acquiescing to using him as a test subject for healing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of a longer chapter with a lot of Tony in it!

### Chapter Five: Early Morning

“Do _not_ fuck this up for me again,” Director Fury said.

He was standing at the head of the table just like he had been, days before, and just like that day, all of the Avengers were seated at the table. Hyacinth and Bruce were seated across from Romanoff and Barton, and Thor, Rogers, and Stark were scattered on chairs with empty spaces around them.

“Going to start with a promise I made.” Fury pointed to Hyacinth and pulled out a file folder. “Your name.”

“New name? A fine plan. Flowers are easily crushed. You deserve a hardier moniker,” Thor said.

Fury leaned back in his chair, holding the folder up to read from it. “The last name needs some work,” he said, frowning. “I was hoping to pick something the press could make hay out of, for a nickname.” He tossed the folder on the table. “Been too busy to give it much effort, though. See what you think.”

Rogers read the name out loud. “Evangeline Hope.”

Barton cracked up and Romanoff punched his shoulder.

“‘Angel of Hope?’” Stark suggested, his voice loaded with derision. “That’s so saccharine they’ll ban all mention of her from grade schools to promote _dental_ hygiene.”

“Evangeline has some promise, honestly,” Hyacinth said, feeling a bit relieved. It wasn’t the name of anyone she knew, nor did it sound like a name she’d ever have chosen for herself. _A clean break,_ she decided. _Evangeline._ “Definitely not the Hope part, though. I don’t need that kind of responsibility.”

“Not to mention the PR,” Bruce said, surprising her into looking over at him. He didn’t seem like the kind of person to worry about that. “We haven’t tested her limits, and we won’t be able to keep her a secret forever. What kind of message would it send to have an Avenger with a name like that who _doesn’t_ spend every waking moment in local hospitals healing everything from broken fingers to multiple gunshot wounds?”

“I’m already on it, with a few analysts,” Fury nodded. “Got any suggestions for the last name, then? The sooner we can get this locked down, the better.”

She’d been thinking about the nickname options, lighting on ‘Evie’ almost immediately and loving it. “Hmm, the name’s got both Eve and the angel in it, what about Adams for the last name?”

“You know that’s a _fallen_ angel,” Stark interjected, pausing ever so slightly on ‘fallen.’

“Evangeline Adams,” Fury said. “I like that. Bigger than life. You think you can handle it?”

“Call me Evie. I’ll work on living up to the rest,” she said. “Evangeline Hyacinth Adams, if you need a middle name.”

“You got it.” Fury said.

“A pleasure to meet you, Lady Evie,” Thor said, inclining his head in a respectful bow.

“Evie Adams,” Stark said, tapping at the tablet in front of him.

“Miss Adams, to you,” she corrected quietly, under the joking comments of the other Avengers. Stark frowned at her, but Fury changed to the next item on the agenda, and she got carried away by the amazing elements of her new life as an Avenger.

8888888888

She was very busy over the course of the next few weeks, doing strength training in the gym with Thor, spec testing with Bruce to find out if there was a way she could practice healing without anyone actually being _injured,_ and a very serious meeting with Agent Maria Hill about where the remaining HYDRA Doe was. 

Evie probably spent too much time visiting Bruce in the lab, but it had been easier for her to get used to her new name than it was to think about leisure activities, such as watching something. In a weird way, she already _was_ watching something. All of her time was spent in an extended Marvel Cinematic Universe Enhanced Experience, with access behind the scenes at Avengers Tower and the ability to talk to Stark’s AI butler.

Getting used to that was like adjusting to thinking of the Black Widow as Natasha instead of Scarlett, or Thor as _Thor,_ rather than Chris. They were the easy ones; she’d liked their movie work, but it was easier to see them as the Avengers they were, rather than the actors themselves. Fury and Stark were more recognizable as the actors, so adjusting to their presence in her life would take longer. Fury went back into hiding and Stark wasn’t around much. When he was, Evie had fallen into a habit of verbally pushing him away as subtly as she could.

Jane Foster and her assistant Darcy Lewis started spending more time in the tower, and with their influence came a lot more communal dinners, mostly because Darcy was a fantastic cook. Their little group expanded and contracted depending on everyone’s assignments and workload, but the core group of Darcy, Jane, Thor, Bruce, Evie, Clint, and Agent Hill seemed to be pretty constant. Stark was around, but not as often. 

On the fourth such dinner evening, Natasha and Steve were away on a mission, Agent Hill was working late helping to coordinate, and Jane and Thor seemed like they were likely to cut out early. They were all seated in the ‘family room’ section (the name drove Stark crazy, so naturally, everyone called it that), and Evie was explaining, with Bruce’s help, how they’d been trying to test her healing abilities.

“Weren’t you trying to keep your existence kind of on the down-low, though?” Darcy asked.

“I mean, yes, but the problem is, it’s tough to practice healing, since that requires people to be injured. We’ve been taking what we can get from the folks still doing SHIELD training, but there are definitely fewer of them now, and we don’t want to scare them away.”

“A lot of it has to do with studying the aspects of their wounds to see if there’s a way to simulate them. That would let her practice without an actual injury,” Bruce said, leaning forward on the couch beside Evie. She could tell by the way he was sitting that he was about to launch into an in-depth description. She leaned back and started making ‘cut him off’ motions at Darcy behind Bruce’s back. “She’s telling you to stop me, isn’t she?” Bruce said without turning around.

“She sure is,” Darcy said.

“Betrayal! I had your back,” Evie protested.

“Which one of us are you talking to?” Bruce asked her, turning to look at her with a professorially raised eyebrow.

“Both of you, is my guess,” Stark said, coming over with a glass of whiskey in his hand. “It’s a moot point, though. You’re almost out of time.” He said the latter so matter-of-factly that Evie didn’t understand what he could be referring to until Bruce reacted.

“Tony--” Bruce complained, sitting back hard and scrubbing a hand through his hair. At this, Darcy widened her eyes in mock sympathy at Evie and left to go talk to Jane and Thor. By Bruce’s demeanor, Evie caught that Stark was about to say something he didn’t want her to hear.

“Let me guess: you didn’t tell her there was a deadline because you were sure you were going to find something. Well, you haven’t, and there’s only one day left,” Stark said, sitting on the wide arm of the loveseat near their couch. “If it helps, I think the SHIELD guys were catching on about the rougher physicals, anyway,” he added, taking a big sip and glancing sideways out the window.

“Three weeks,” Evie repeated, looking between Bruce and Stark before glaring at Stark. “That’s what you gave him to find a way to simulate wounds? That’s hardly any time at all!”

“I’m not the one who wanted to keep it from you,” Stark said quietly.

She could feel herself getting worked up. Stark thought she should be angry with Bruce, but she wasn’t. Bruce had probably kept the deadline to himself thinking it wouldn’t matter, that he’d come up with something and spare her this moment. She closed her eyes and tried to regulate her breathing, nearly jumping out of her skin when she felt a hand on top of hers.

“I’m sorry,” Bruce said. “For startling you _and_ for not saying anything. I guess I was overconfident.”

“Were you, though?” Evie said, turning her body on the couch to face him. “Sounds to me like three weeks was an artificial deadline, and it’s pretty obvious it wasn’t _your_ artificial deadline.”

“It’s the funding’s artificial deadline,” Stark said, finishing off his drink.

“Sell back the stupid clothes you’ve gotten some flunky to sneak back into my closet three separate times, then. That’d probably buy another week,” Evie told him.

“I’m _hurt,”_ Stark said with exaggerated insolence. “You don’t need more money, you need a better plan! His doesn’t have a _use_ outside of what you need it for. Do you know how many advancements society got just because they were originally designed for the NASA space missions? What you need to do is find a willing test subject.”

“We’ve been over this, Tony,” Bruce said, getting up and walking over to the wall of windows looking out over New York City.

Stark got up too, coming over to stand by the couch. “Yeah, the two of _us_ have. Did you mention it to Evie?”

“‘Miss Adams,’” Evie muttered stubbornly.

“Yeah, gotta keep up that artificial distance,” he snarked, sitting down fairly close to her on the couch. 

Because of the way she was sitting, Evie was stuck unless she wanted to ask him to move. She was going to have to listen to him. Stark knew it, too.

“So why haven’t you tried a test subject?”

Sullenly, she answered him. “Steve, Thor, and Bruce all have healing factors of their own, along with the risk of setting Bruce off, which--”

“Yeah.”

“After everything Natasha has gone through, I couldn’t ask her to help me test powers that HYDRA gave me,” Evie continued. Stark nodded. “And Clint told me that he made a promise that he won’t let himself get hurt ‘on purpose,’ anymore-- his words. Even if it’s for a good cause, I don’t want to hurt him or make him break that.”

“Okay, those make sense, but I can’t help but notice something,” he said, turning so he was fully facing her.

Evie could feel her heart starting to speed up, keeping pace with the little thrill she felt being under his scrutiny. She knew there were two things he could point out, but didn’t know which one he’d pick.

“You referred to each and every one of those people by their first names,” Stark finally said, a ghost of a smile touching his lips. “You also left me out.”

Of course. He was _Tony Stark,_ if there was a multiple choice question he could simply answer ‘yes,’ to, he would. Evie wondered if the truth would work, just this once.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” she admitted reluctantly.

“Do it anyway.”

 _“What?_ No.” She went to get up, but Stark leaned over and placed his hand flat on the arm, blocking her in. She felt a blush rising along with her heartbeat and bit her lip. He noticed that, his eyes dropping to her lips before meeting her eyes again.

“Pick one, then. Use me as your test subject, or start calling me Tony,” Stark said, breaking into a gorgeous, insolent smile. It was the first time he’d used his charm against her, and it was _effective._

“That’s a ridiculous ultimatum,” she said, finding it hard to maintain eye contact. She realized that the room was full of people who would absolutely give her shit for sassing Stark yet again. She’d been using that as a tactic for weeks, creating exactly what he’d remarked on at the beginning of the conversation, artificial distance. It had been naive to assume he hadn’t noticed.

“Look at me, not them. Pick one.”

After a deep breath, Evie said, “Tony Stark, move your damn hand.”

“Not good enough.”

“You are a _complete--”_

“Just my first name. Like with the others. We’re a team, remember?”

“I know why you’re doing this,” she said, falling back against the couch and away from him. She knew her cheeks were pink, her eyes were probably dilated, and if Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock Holmes knew when a woman wanted him, ‘Tony Stark, Genius Billionaire _Playboy’_ certainly would. She needed to get back to her original tactic of pushing him away. “You’re trying to goad me into wanting to hurt you.”

He shrugged in that vulnerable, defensive way he had. That, not how he was pushing, not how he’d given Bruce a token three weeks for something Banner truly cared about, _that_ was what set her off enough to shove past his arm.

Stark couldn’t have expected it, because he was plenty strong enough to have stopped her if he had. That didn’t matter once she was standing.

> _=Emergency message from Captain Rogers: The Quinjet is en route with a serious injury to Agent Romanoff’s leg. ETA is nineteen minutes.=_

“Where does it land?” Evie asked Stark, who had leaped to his feet.

“This way.”

Bruce jogged up and joined them as they waited a tense few seconds for the elevator to open.

“Clint went to get my medical stuff,” Bruce said as they walked in. He was talking quickly, jittery, concerned. “It’s just a precaution, it’s not that I don’t trust--”

“I get it,” she said softly, grabbing his hand to squeeze it in reassurance.

“Is this one of those moments where two people realize their feelings right before the big game? ‘Cause I can ask JARVIS to halt this and I can take a different elevator. Quinjet won’t be here for another--”

Evie immediately released Bruce’s hand.

“Tony I need you to stop talking right now please,” Bruce said in a deeply uncomfortable voice.

“Bruce, I’m serious. I think she’s trying to communicate on a deeper--”

“JARVIS are there any Iron Man helmets with a muzzle on them?” Evie interrupted loudly. Predictably, this didn’t stop Stark at all.

“I’m not trying to _ruin_ anything for the two of you, I’m just saying--”

> _=There are no current prototypes that limit Iron Man’s ability to speak, Miss Adams. Unfortunately, we all must rely on his instinctive, hereditary level of tact to prevent himself from making verbal blunders.=_

“Wow, a dig on my father, nice.”

The elevator doors opened, and Evie spent the next few minutes listening to Stark tell her about how the Quinjet would fly in, when to know it was safely docked, and the no-go area where its doors would open onto the flight deck. 

All that was left to do was stand there with the small knot of people who were also waiting. Clint ran up with Bruce’s things and then started talking with Agent Hill.

There was silence for a whole minute before Stark started in on them again.

“Bruce, I just don’t want you to miss out on--”

“Tony,” Bruce said, and Stark stopped talking. There was an odd doubling to the word, as if when Bruce had spoken, a second, deeper voice had joined him.

“I stopped. I’m stopping, I mean. There. Stopped.”

“Thank you.” Bruce sounded like Bruce again. “For what it’s worth, I’m pretty sure she’s got feelings for someone else, so please, don’t do that again, all right? Even if you mean well.”

Evie was spared the immediate repercussions of this revelation by someone calling out that they saw the Quinjet. 

Evie heard Natasha call out as soon as the door started to move. “It hurts like hell but I’m not dying, I’ll be fine.”

The door bottomed out on the landing pad and Evie raced inside. Steve showed her the wound, and then she was in the time bubble again, her hand resting on Natasha’s shattered ankle. She could see every bone shard and where it was supposed to go. Her power let her see the paths of blood vessels which were displaced and pinched, and how to restore them. With the energy boost she provided, Natasha’s own healing cells were supercharged, racing to repair her injury. Evie felt a tickle on the back of her neck, an odd sort of pressure release, and then her hair was free of its ponytail, rippling in the wake of her power.

It felt like it took a full ten minutes to rearrange and repair everything, but when Evie finally lifted her hand, she saw Thor running up from the elevator bank. He had taken only a few minutes to escort Jane and Darcy to their rooms.

“That does _not_ feel like it looks, I gotta say,” Natasha said.

“How does it look?” Evie asked, suddenly curious.

“It looks like it ought to be peaceful,” was the answer.

“How does it feel?” Stark asked.

“Not peaceful.”

8888888888

Stark started an all-out campaign to get her to use him as her guinea pig.

He extended Bruce’s funding deadline for five days, but then proceeded to spend those five days pestering, teasing, and demanding that Evie use him as a human test subject. She both loved and hated the attention. Something about Stark was personally magnetizing to her, as if she were attuned to him in some way. If she felt like that already, then how was she going to get through a series of test experiences where she had to touch him and heal him?

A week after the dinner when he’d first asked her to call him Tony, Evie lay in bed in her suite of rooms in Avengers’ tower, completely unable to sleep.

She rolled out of bed and groaned. Maybe sitting in the big room with the wall of windows looking out onto the city would help. She loved her view, but a person could feel truly surrounded by the city in the family room. Evie dressed in a comfortable pair of slacks and one of Bruce’s t-shirts that he had been about to donate. It was stupid, she knew, but he’d become such a solid friend, and having something of his made this dream-world of hers okay. His shirt was a talisman of sorts, as if she couldn’t wake up if she had it in her possession.

Evie walked out into the family room with bare feet, relishing the chill of the air conditioning. The shadows in the room were always incomprehensible at night, so she didn’t even realize she wasn’t alone until the hand she’d trailed across the backs of all the furniture encountered something warm.

Her gasp sounded incredibly loud.

“Don’t, it’s okay, I was already awake,” Stark said.

“It figures the person to scare the heart right out of me would be the only one ineligible to replace it. God, _say_ something next time!” she said, weakly, falling into the nearest chair.

“Not true-- I am shrapnel free,” Tony said, gesturing to his blank chest. “In my defense, I think you would have jumped out of your skin no matter what.”

“Yeah, okay,” she allowed. Evie went limp in her chair, letting her head loll to the side. She was trying to convince her body that there wasn’t a need for the heightened heart rate or blasts of adrenaline anymore. Somehow she’d forgotten about his surgery, and her mind cast back over the time she’d spent in the tower already. She _had_ seen Stark wearing the ARC reactor, one that was apparently not embedded in his chest, but it appeared that her assumption that his clothing had covered it at other times was inaccurate. “I didn’t know about the surgery,” she told him. It was mostly true. She barely remembered Iron Man 3.

“It’s not common knowledge. Helps if people still think I’m always equipped with a power source.”

“I’ve seen you still wearing one, yeah,” she said. “The tell-tale glow.”

 _“Your_ glow seems to turn a different color depending on how severe the person’s injury is,” Stark said. His voice was quiet, contemplative.

“I’m afraid to ask if your knowledge is based on the confiscated films.”

“No, but yes. Kind of. I had JARVIS look at them for me, compile some rough data. I…” He broke off, and she let herself really look at Stark for the first time since she’d walked in. The light from the city touched him in only a few places, accentuating his eyes. Lately she never saw him without experiencing his dogged determination to change her mind. This Tony was relaxed and thoughtful.

“Go on,” she said. “I won’t snipe at you. For once.”

He chuckled, and heat bloomed in her chest. “I didn’t want to see you like that. Healing someone who was _hurt,_ for you. The inevitable look on your face.” He sounded weary, shaking his head.

“And yet you want to be that person!” She pulled in her arms and legs from their lazy drape, hugging one of her knees to her chest.

“Let the record show that I was not the one who brought it up, this time,” Tony said, holding up a finger. He looked at her, and she could see his eyes trace over her, head to toe, and back.

Impulsively, she voiced the thought that sprang to mind, even though she knew it would change everything. “I’m going to have to give in, aren’t I?”

His posture didn’t change, but the intensity of his expression did. She could see that his hands had tightened around his water bottle and the arm of the chair. “Yes,” he said, softly.

“I wish you weren’t so anxious to do this.” Evie said. “Ugh, I wish I _would_ wake up. I haven’t thought that in weeks, did you know that? Weeks!” She let her other leg fall back down, planted her elbows in her lap, and covered her face. Her hair fell like a curtain to cover them. “I am _not_ cut out for this shit.”

“Wake up? What do you mean?” he asked.

“You _still_ didn’t read the file!” Evie looked at him in astonishment. The powerful yawn she was hit with right afterwards diminished her moral indignation just a little.

“I had JARVIS--”

“He wouldn’t have left this out, would he? JARVIS?”

> _=I have indeed relayed your belief that this situation is the product of a dream to Mr. Stark. It is possible that he has conflated this with Doctor Banner’s initial assessment of your mental state: that you thought this world was imaginary, an escape from your experiences in the HYDRA facility.=_

“Yes!” Stark was snapping his fingers. “But you’re saying you really did think this isn’t real?”

“I’m a former nurse sitting in a high-rise tower with _you,_ aren’t I?”

“I was hoping you might call me Tony, there. Let it slip out,” he teased.

“That’s the thing. Maybe I told myself that if I’ve somehow earned the right to use your name, that means this is all real,” she admitted, trying to figure out how to articulate what she meant under a cloud of exhaustion. “I could rationalize using everyone else’s first names except yours and Black Widow’s. I use them in my head, but in person? Who am I that I think I have the right to do that?”

“You call me Tony in your head?” Tony asked her, in a smug tone.

“Damn, I said that out loud?” she said, only half teasing. She yawned again, the force of it causing her to lean over and sit back up, rubbing her eyes.

“You’re tired,” he told her. “Come on, I’ll pretend I didn’t hear you.” He walked over and held out his hand.

Evie felt hung over. The adrenaline from letting her guard down was acting like the puppet strings which animated her exhausted body. Without that, she wasn’t even sure she’d have been able to get up at all.

“What time is it?” she asked, once she’d bobbled to her feet without his help.

“3 AM,” Tony said. He was standing in front of her with one arm held straight on either side as if ready to catch her. She yawned again, then grimaced. 

“Oh, my God, I think I’ve just hit the wall,” she whined. “Maybe I’ll just sleep here in the chair?”

“Nope. Come here,” Tony said. Before she fully understood what he was doing, he’d scooped her up. “I have a rule, though. Every sentence has to contain the word ‘Tony,’ or I drop you off on the roof. No exceptions.”

Evie glared at him with as much effort as she could muster up for as tired as she was, but even holding her head up was iffy, so she rested her head on his shoulder. Being that close to him, feeling his strength bearing her up-- it was comforting, which she hadn’t expected.

When they got to her door, Tony looked down at her.

“I’d have thought you’d be glad to do heal testing on me, especially if you expected to be the one inflicting the injuries,” he said, looking at her with his brows furrowed.

She shook her head emphatically, narrowing her eyes at his attempt to get her to be beholden to his rule.

“All right, I believe you.” He set her down, but was standing between herself and the door. “You have to admit you’ve been a little _hostile.”_

“You locked me in a penthouse jail cell and called me a HYDRA goon!” Evie reminded him.

Tony looked up and leaned his head back and forth as if trying to weigh the importance of such actions. “Yeah, okay,” he said. “I’m just, you know. Protective of the team.” His lips twisted into a flippant half-smile.

“Well, for the good of the team, why don’t you move out of my way, unless you want to explain to my best friend why I slept in the doorway to my room,” Evie told him wearily.

“See, now that jumps right over from test violence into real violence.” His voice was sardonic, but his expression showed he was impressed by her threat. However, he still didn’t move out of the way.

Evie walked closer to the wall and put her back up against it, starting the process of sliding down to sit.

“Okay, okay. Good night, Evie,” he said, backing up, his head inclined in a farewell gesture.

She decided to let his use of her first name stand. “Night, Stark.”

8888888888

Tony sent a message through JARVIS that he wanted her to come down to his basement suit lab for the heal testing, so she dressed in black, put her hair into a ponytail, and went down there five minutes earlier than he’d told her to show up.

The wall was glass, and Tony was obviously listening to music or something when she got there. He was seated at a messy worktable, an Iron Man gauntlet held up at eye level by some kind of clamp. The wire work he seemed to be doing was so intricate that Evie just stood there and waited. Soon enough, though, Tony turned and saw her, said something she couldn’t hear, and the door swung open.

“You’re early, not to mention--” he said when she walked in, ostentatiously looking her up and down. “--dramatically dressed.”

Evie looked down at herself. “I didn’t think so? I’m just wearing black because, well. I assume there will probably be blood.”

“No, that makes sense.” Tony picked up a protective mitt from the table and put it on one hand. Then, he reached over and picked up an acetylene torch that had been lying on the same table, thumbing the switch that turned it on. “I figure we can start with some mild burns. JARVIS said you definitely healed burns.” Tony held the torch back from his face, but at eye level, as if to gauge where the heat started. Then he shifted his grip as if he were about to point it directly at his bare arm.

“Wait, woah, okay, _that’s_ just not scientific, first of all,” Evie yelled out, jogging over from where she’d been standing at the door. She used one hand to steady the torch and turn it to face away from both of them, and turned it off.

“See, look at you,” Tony said, sarcastically proud. “Getting more comfortable around me already.”

“And you wondered why I might be resistant to doing this? I know you’re anxious to get going, but I’m going to need a little more--” she stopped. The word hovering on the tip of her tongue was ‘foreplay,’ but she knew better than to give Tony Stark that kind of lead-in. Unfortunately, just pausing was enough. Evie felt the blush start rising up her neck and onto her face as a naughty grin crossed Tony’s face. He lifted an eyebrow and leaned back on his desk.

“Go on?” he said, the words loaded with anticipation.

‘Preparation’ was out. So was ‘lead-in.’

“Planning. That’s the word.” Evie was rather proud of herself. Tony’s grin was indelible, though, so she turned around to deny him the attention he clearly expected from her. 

Evie started to look for a clean table, or at least, one she could move a few things to give herself a workspace. “We’re not just doing this for knowledge, but also trying to use this as a jumping off point for supplies, armor plans, energy consumption, right? So just burning a hole in your arm isn’t the way to go about it.”

“You ran over and stopped me because it was _inefficient?”_

“And because I am not sure anyone is immediately prepared to watch another person deliberately injure themselves, particularly not when it’s _you,”_ Evie blurted out. She started moving things around on the desk.

“If anything, it being me should be easier. I clearly have no regard for my own health and safety,” Tony pointed out. 

He walked over with a rubber storage bin and started sweeping things off of the desk into it. Evie saw a document that was getting crushed. When she reached in to rescue it, the back of her hand was scraped by a screwdriver. She hissed and pressed a thumb against it.

“There, you don’t even need me.”

“I can’t heal myself,” she pointed out. “How about this,” she said, sitting down on the chair with one leg folded underneath her, grabbing a pen and a miraculously blank sheet of paper. “We start out with simple stuff; second degree burns, cuts shallower than bone deep, blunt trauma not strong enough to break anything, that kind of thing. Then, we can ramp up with severity, still alternating for your body’s sake and my own mental health. We should also see if there’s some kind of diminishing return when there are multiple injuries healed on the same day, as well as what kind of damage was healed.” She handed Tony the sheet, a bullet-point list hastily written as she’d spoken.

“You got some blood on it,” he said, holding it up.

“I’d apologize, but I think that’s hardly the last blood we’re going to get on something,” she said wryly.

“True. Well, now that this is all settled, can I burn my arm?” Tony said, pointing behind him with a completely cavalier attitude.

“Go ahead, I know you’re excited,” Evie said, sighing. The chances that he’d really listened to her were probably nil, she realized.

“You’re determined to suck the fun out of everything, aren’t you?” he told her, grabbing the torch and firing it up.

“Remember, _mild_ burn. No holding it against your skin as it crisps up cause you think it looks bad ass. I promise, I won’t be impressed.”

Tony narrowed his eyes at her, then held out his left arm with his hand palm up before making a fist. Then, he aimed the torch at his arm, his expression serious. Tony’s arm didn’t waver, but the fist tightened along with his jaw. Evie watched his face instead of the wound he was making, and saw that when he pulled the torch back and turned it off, he let out a relieved breath.

She rushed over as he set the acetylene torch down and looked critically at the serious second degree burn he’d inflicted. Tony seemed interested in examining it, but Evie had hated every second of watching him hurt himself, so she pulled his arm close against her side with one hand and laid the other directly on the wound.

It was almost too hot to touch, and she huffed out a frustrated breath before trying again. The feeling of time-bent unreality hit her again, just like with Bruce’s injury. The process of fixing Tony’s was very different than Banner’s laceration. It involved a good deal of excising damaged cells, something she told herself she’d want to note down. Her ponytail holder burst loose after not too long, but Evie ignored the tickling brush of her silver hair against her neck.

When she was done, she lifted her hand and was pleased to see that there was only a red mark left behind.

“No scar,” Tony said, his voice _very_ close. His left hand moved along her waist, and Evie took a large step back.

“I think that’s because of the energy I’m able to apply to the healing process. It lets the repair be more… perfect, I guess you could say. There’s energy to spare.”

“That extra touch,” he said, stroking his other hand along the place he’d been hurt. Then, the contemplative moment shifted, and in a voice full of excitement, Tony said, “I can’t _wait_ to do that again!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I fully own that this chapter has some serious 'spot the fandom cliche' settings (Darcy Lewis and her communal meals, Bruce perennially in the lab), but there's a reason why we find that stuff comforting in pre-Ultron fanfic so I am (mostly) unrepentant!


	6. Mid-Morning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heal-testing gets more intense as Tony pushes farther than Evie wants to go. Then, an event happens that gives her the courage to ask to stop, but Tony wants to know who RDJ is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Allusions are made in this chapter to heal test injuries, but not described. There was just no way I felt comfortable detailing those, heh.
> 
> === TRIGGER WARNING === attempted mugging, some mentions of blood === TRIGGER WARNING ===

### Chapter Six: Mid-Morning

Evie didn’t know if Tony was addicted to the feeling of being healed, to the challenge of figuring out new and creative ways to injure himself, or the adrenaline rush from the pain itself, but she really hoped it wasn’t the latter. Mostly, he seemed to be focused on proving to her that his body was capable of going through any punishment he deemed necessary. They were coming up on two weeks of testing, and Evie was starting to feel like the whole situation was careening out of control.

“Hey,” he greeted her the day they’d agreed to test crush injuries. “Wasn’t sure you were coming.”

Evie nodded, walking into the room slowly. “Thought about ditching.”

“Ditching? All right, let’s do it,” he said. He’d been wearing his Iron Man suit from the waist down, and on saying this, he walked over to where he kept the suits displayed, unfastening the pieces to put them away. Tony was wearing a black tank top with his ARC reactor affixed to his chest, and his arms really did look like chiseled stone, just like the Vanity Fair article had said earlier that week.

“Wait, I thought you were excited about today?” she said, trying not to look over to see what he wore under the suit.

“Promise me you’ll still put your hands on me and I’m fine with skipping just this once,” he teased, pulling on a long-sleeved shirt. 

Evie was speechless. He didn’t often flirt with her, which she was actually grateful for. It would have been difficult to swing between this kind of outrageous flirting and those moments between injury and the start of healing. Each had their own kind of intimacy, but flirting was too unserious compared with the task of watching his stalwart expression fracture into agony when he thought she wasn’t looking. Then again, even though she was rapidly falling right past ‘crush’ into ‘massive infatuation’ on a firm path toward ‘actually in love’ with the man, being around him was just _fun,_ and she couldn’t resist answering in kind.

“But, Mr. Stark,” she said, adopting a softer, more subservient tone. “The Employment Agency said I’m not even supposed to look you in the eye!”

Tony was on board immediately. “It’s my animal magnetism. You’d never get anything done!”

“Magnetism! Is that how your suit sticks to you when you fly?” Evie asked, widening her eyes as innocently as possible.

“All right, you know what?” Tony started toward her, pretending to be affronted.

> _=Sir, Dr. Banner has achieved a level of sustainability in the program you and he were working on. He’d like you to come as soon as possible to examine it.=_

“Go on,” Evie said, swallowing the flash of regret at losing time with him that wasn’t devoted to pain and the alleviation of it.

He nodded, offered an apologetic smile, and left.

8888888888

“I think I need to watch how I talk about this in mixed company,” Tony said to her the morning of their third week.

“I think you should probably _always_ watch how you talk in mixed company,” Evie observed. “What happened?”

“I saw a cool gadget on Pepper’s desk and asked if I could borrow it. I told her it would make an interesting wound pattern.”

Evie was glad he wasn’t looking at her, because she made a horrified face. Picturing Tony injuring himself using something from Pepper Potts’ elegant, sleek office was horrifying. Evie tried to come up with something to say that didn’t sound like a rebuke, which might just prompt him to double down.

“Tell her I’m sorry, would you? I didn’t mean to make you get so grim in casual conversation. In fact, maybe that’s a good segue into--”

“Pepper’s fine, she’s dealt with worse over the years,” Tony said. “Besides, she gave it to me.” He held up what looked like a foot-long collection of square pipes arrayed around a central sphere. “What do you think? Stomach?”

 _Tony!!!_ Evie screamed at him silently. Using his name would probably have gotten his attention, but only long enough to crow about having gotten her to break her promise never to use it. Then, after that wore off, he’d be back to his seeming goal of topping the injury she’d healed last time.

“I was thinking maybe we should ramp back?” 

“Ramp back? No no no no no no,” Tony said. “You’re fully shifted into the green, now, and not just with bone breaks. I think we can see if you can go blue.”

Evie stamped her foot. “This isn’t about _colors,_ for God’s sake, it’s about your life! And the pain you’re enduring!” She pinched the bridge of her nose in frustration. “I’m not sure I can do this today.”

“Aww, but Pepper only lent this to me for one day!”

“She has no idea it’s gone, does she?”

Tony shifted his weight from foot to foot, twisting his lips to the side. Finally, he sighed. “No.”

“Put it back.”

“Yes, _dear,”_ he said, heading for the elevator.

Evie fled. When she was back at her rooms, she put on Do Not Disturb and laid on her bed, flat on her back, with the pillows over her face.

“JARVIS, you know a lot about the really advanced tech that’s available out there, right?”

> _=There is no available technology that can cause a person to stop having unwelcome romantic feelings, I’m afraid.=_

“That obvious, eh?”

> _=The look on your face when Mr. Stark called you ‘dear’ was, shall we say, telling.=_

“Erase that one from the records, will you? Call it a system glitch; I tripped and looked stupid and asked you to nuke it, whatever kind of excuse _other than the truth_ would be much appreciated,” she said, sighing into her shield of pillows.

8888888888

That evening was one of the group dinners, and she almost skipped it. Her feelings, usually completely buried in vast, self-imposed layers, lay shallow and in very real danger of being exposed. However, with the information they’d gotten from the Canada safehouse where Nat had gotten injured, Steve was pretty sure they were going to need an all-hands mission soon. The team bonding was more important than her worries.

When she got there, Evie found her seat next to Bruce empty. He was making the expression he made when he was frustrated but it wasn’t worth the fight.

“Anyone who makes another couple joke about Bruce and Evie tonight will be invited to an archery competition with me tomorrow. Loser buys me beer for a month,” Clint said before she even took her first sip of water.

“I feel that I must bear some of the blame for such ribbing,” Thor said. “So few of my fellow Avengers are lucky enough to share their evenings with both their loved ones and their team.” He looked down at Jane fondly.

“Thor, I know you mean well, but that almost counts! Or maybe I just really want to observe you and Clint in a shoot-off,” Evie admitted.

“Seconded,” Tony said. After that, everyone broke into smaller conversations to laugh and chat.

“Don’t you usually get the head of the table?” she asked Tony. It was disconcerting that tonight of all nights, he was right across from her.

“Darcy beat me here, then threatened to arm-wrestle. She told me having superhero arms counts as cheating! I _magnanimously_ decided to let her stay, just this once,” Tony said, drawing out the word ‘magnanimously.’ “Pepper had some stuff to go over that made me late, so technically, it’s her fault.” He popped a baby carrot into his mouth.

“You should really bring her, you know. Thor had a point,” Evie said. By the time she was finished speaking, everyone within earshot of her was staring.

“You think I’m with Pepper. _With,_ with,” Tony said, his brows furrowed. He was looking at her like she’d handed him a missing puzzle piece.

“I--” She didn’t know what to say. It was clear by the way he was reacting that he was not, in fact, in a relationship with Pepper. Evie was genuinely embarrassed, and Tony was staring at her. She looked over at Bruce, wishing there was something he could do to help, like hit an ejector seat button. She wouldn’t put it past Tony to have ejector seats in the tower.

“The differences between universes are fascinating,” Bruce said with his mouth full, adding casually, “Anyone need more rolls?”

Evie allowed herself to cover her face with both hands. On top of the baffled expression on Tony’s face, for some reason being wrong about this particular situation made her unbearably sad, and everyone was watching her.

When she pictured Tony with Pepper, it was as a committed but dysfunctional couple. Now for all she knew, Tony could have a parade of beautiful women in his rooms every week. None of them would know that he was hurting himself on purpose so she could heal him, over and over.

Picturing him sleeping alone the whole time wasn’t much better.

“Are you all right?” Bruce whispered.

“Yeah, let me just grab some rolls,” she said, pushing her chair back blindly and snagging the bread basket. She didn’t even notice it was mostly full until she got to the kitchen island in the adjoining room.

“Hey,” Tony said, behind her.

“Please, not right now.”

“It’s just that you’re very clearly upset, and I feel responsible. It’s an uncomfortable feeling, so I’m going to need you to buck up and help me get through it,” he said.

It was so _Tony_ that she couldn’t stop her helpless laugh. “You should really look up a support group, an issue like that could really hold you back professionally.”

“Yeah, I’d hate to think this is as far as I’ll ever get in this life,” Tony said. His brown eyes were warm, and he was whole and unscarred despite everything he’d gone through for her in the past weeks, and she just gave up on holding back.

“You know, I didn’t want you to be the test subject in the first place,” Evie reminded him. “What made it better was knowing you had someone to go home to that cared about you, that you could snuggle with and feel whole. I’m just thrown, that’s all. Go back, make a flippant joke, I’ll head to bed, and that’ll be that.”

“I never considered a change of that magnitude,” Tony said, his brows furrowed. He looked like he was trying to compute all possible changes at once. Evie wouldn’t put it past him to get JARVIS to run a simulation, later.

She turned away from him and hunted around for more rolls. When she didn’t find any, she grabbed a small bowl and a wide, deep plate.

“What else is different?” he asked, coming up to stand at the island beside her. Evie had to force herself to stay still. If he touched her, she might catch fire, she thought. And she couldn’t heal herself.

She focused on dumping out the rolls onto the plate. Then, she put the bowl upside-down in the basket, settling the large napkin on top of it. Finally, Evie put the rolls from the plate back inside the basket and stepped back. Tony started laughing.

“That’s genius. Everyone will think I flew you out to get more! Evie, I’m really glad you’re here, as a part of the team.”

Evie almost got whiplash from how quickly he’d shifted from being amused and impressed to expressing such a heartfelt sentiment. She turned to look at him and a warm spark of something flared to life deep inside. 

“It isn’t just the work you’ve put in, the healing. You fit. I wanted you to know,” Tony murmured, his eyes tracing across her features before catching her in their gaze.

It was a Moment, and Evie knew what she had to do, for the sake of his ego _and_ for her heart. She leaned her head sideways and allowed a small amount of how she felt to show, hoping he’d see it as gratitude.

“That’s-- _Thank_ you, really,” she said in a low voice. The way Tony’s eyes darkened in response was thrilling, and she’d probably replay that in her head more than once later, but she had the Lord’s work to do. “But I’m still not calling you by your first name.” Evie grinned and stepped back, grabbing the basket of rolls and holding it like a shield between them. “Really nice try though. _Solid_ work.”

A wall of defensiveness slid up to change his expression from attractive sincerity to flippant narcissism. “Damn, I really thought I had you.”

 _Oh, you did,_ she thought to herself. _God help me._

8888888888

On the morning of the 23rd day since they’d started testing, Evie’s phone buzzed while she was on her morning run.

> **_J.A.R.V.I.S.:_** _Thor has requested to cancel the training later this morning. He has given no coherent explanation, which I have concluded means he is hung over, given his activities last evening._
> 
> **((HyVie)):** I didn’t think gods could get hung over?? But that’s fine, of course. Tell him (quietly) that I wish him a calm, restful day.
> 
> **_J.A.R.V.I.S.:_** _I will use my discretion in relaying your message. I have discovered that certain people find a whispering AI quite disturbing, and none of them were recovering from an abundance of alcohol consumption at the time._
> 
> **((HyVie)):** Honestly, please don’t ever make me live without you, J. You’re the light of my life.

She’d been standing next to a tree while she read the messages, and when she went to tuck her phone back away, Evie suddenly noticed that there was a man standing beside her.

“Nice phone.”

He was dirty and his breath smelled bad. Evie immediately saw a problem: her workout gear didn’t have pockets. She hadn’t bothered to buy any that did, because it was her habit to tuck her phone into a special pocket in her tank top, down through the vee-shaped neckline in her shirt. Women’s pants pockets weren’t big enough for her phone, and she was absent-minded enough to leave it places, otherwise. 

Drawing attention to her chest wasn’t something she wanted to do in front of this guy, though. It felt like maybe someone who walked up to strange women on the street in NYC wouldn’t understand it wasn’t an _invitation._

Evie looked around at where she was and inwardly groaned. StarkPhones had an exercise app that awarded points for having covered certain percentages of the roads in any given area. Without that prompting, she wouldn’t have ventured into side streets like this one, which was surrounded by seedy looking shops with boarded up side windows. There were far too many dark alleyways for her liking.

“Thanks,” she said to the man, deciding to just hold her phone in a tight grip so she could get back to jogging. In the next second, she regretted not just tucking it in anyway and trusting her instincts.

Her attacker wrapped his large hand around her upper arm and pulled her toward him. She lost hold of the phone and it went flying. Evie kept her balance by sheer force of will, her feet rushing to catch up with her upper body, propelling her into a nearby alley. While looking around for some kind of weapon, she dropped into the stance that Thor had taught her.

“Karate chick, eh?” the man sneered.

Her confidence wavered from solid to gas and back again in the seconds it took before the thug launched himself at her. Evie pivoted on the balls of her feet, just like she’d practiced. The sequence felt the same, but the sounds were different in the alley, harder and more real. The man went limp, and she scrambled to get out from their tangle of limbs. That was when she saw the jutting metal his leg had landed on.

His pain must have taken a few seconds to register, because she saw the blood before he screamed.

“Fucking bitch!” he groaned, his hand flailing out and grabbing hers. Evie tugged, but he turned his fingers inward, cutting her with every pull with his jagged fingernails. Every instinct told her to kick him, but she was afraid he’d grab her leg and knock her down. He was struggling to pull something from his pocket. It looked like a knife handle. 

After what felt like forever, the blood from the fingernail cuts made it hard for him to hold onto her, and she was able to slip free. Evie staggered back, bending over to cradle her hand. As she did, her fingers brushed against the panic bracelet the Avengers had given her.

 _Oh. Fuck. Right,_ she thought, hitting the button.

No one outside the alley seemed to have heard their altercation, even though her attacker was roaring a litany of swear words. Evie had some of her own; her arm _hurt_. She heard a roaring in her ears. Her vision narrowed and she felt lightheaded.

“Ugh is this shock?” she said. Her voice sounded like she was on the verge of throwing up, but all of her focus was on the agony in her hand. Evie tried to breathe slowly and deeply, but every time she pulled in a breath, the throbbing of her hand made her whine with pain.

There was a loud whooshing sound followed by a thump and a metal servo noise, and Tony was there. His faceplate went up, and she was never more grateful to hear his voice in her life.

“You’re bleeding. Tell me it’s his blood or I’ll blast him to Mars.”

“No blasting,” she said, fighting to feel like she had enough breath to talk. “Attacked me, I flipped him. Thor taught me. He landed on something sharp.”

“Your bitch girlfriend ripped me up! You people shouldn’t be allowed to exist!”

Tony’s gaze snapped to hers, his hand still positioned with his weapon aimed directly at the man’s head.

“He’s got a knife,” she said. “He’s hurt worse than… Just meant to flip him, I--”

Tony looked up like he was listening, then powered down the weapon in his gauntlet. “JARVIS says the police are 2 minutes out. Time to go.”

Hearing this helped her ability to breathe, not to mention think, more clearly. “I didn’t mean to hurt him this bad, I could fix it,” Evie said. “See, I still have one good hand.” She nodded toward her right hand, but the look on Tony’s face when seeing it made her look, too. It was covered in blood.

The sirens that she’d mostly tuned out as ambient noise started to come closer.

“I’m going to sue both of you!” her attacker snarled.

Tony walked up to her and put one hand on either shoulder, just like Steve had the day she’d met him. “Time to go. Can you--”

Knowing Tony’s love/hate relationship with Captain America, Evie had started tearing up, and this apparently answered whatever question he’d been about to ask. Tony picked her up, heedless of the way the blood from both of her hands were getting on the suit.

“The blood makes my hands slip, I don’t think I can hold onto you!” Evie cried, suddenly completely terrified.

“Hey, Evie. Hey, hey,” Tony said, trying to get her to look at him.

She was staring at her hands, picturing how it would feel to slip out of his grip. 

_“Hyacinth,_ look at me!” he finally commanded. She sucked in a breath and did as he asked. “I’ve got you.” Evie was crying full-on now, and she felt so stupid to be more scared of falling out of the sky with Iron Man than she was being attacked by a street thug. Tony’s brown eyes were sympathetic but direct. “I promise, I’ve got you.”

“Okay,” she whispered. She held her injured hand up against her chest and threw her other one around his neck. Tony took off seconds before the police cruiser drove up and blocked the alley.

8888888888

For Evie, cutting edge medical tech was great, but having the power to tell her best friend and sometimes doctor that she would like the really good drugs was even better.

It wasn’t until the tranquilizers wore off that she realized the _actual_ best part was that Bruce had been fully in control of his faculties, enough to speak to, when Tony had brought her back. That meant that he hadn’t gotten angry enough to hulk out after getting the news that she was attacked. She thought about telling him that when she opened her eyes and saw him standing by her bedside, reading her chart. Instead, she went with humor. Maybe it was because she’d been spending so much time with Tony, lately.

“Hey, Bruce, do you think I could self-heal a traumatic amputation?”

“Please tell me he didn’t try to rip your arm off, because I know a guy who could probably return the favor,” Bruce said, tucking away his glasses and smiling at her. It was a wan smile, but it made her glad to smile back.

“Nope, I was just thinking about how I can’t heal myself, and whether it would still count as ‘myself’ if my limbs were detached,” she said, studiously avoiding looking down at where her hand was on the bed, thickly swathed in gauze. “Though now that I say it out loud, I’d really like to remove all of this from the record, because I’ve already been trying, unsuccessfully, to get Tony to stop testing, and if he finds out about that idea--”

“We can stop.”

It was Tony.

Bruce held up her chart. “I need to put this back.”

“Don’t leave. _Bruce_ \--” She stopped speaking because Bruce shook his head at her, and his expression was serious. Her curiosity piqued, Evie just sat back in bed and watched as Tony stepped forward to take the spot beside her bed that Bruce vacated. As he walked past Tony, Bruce squeezed his shoulder.

“Say hi to RDJ for me, okay?” he said to her in parting. She couldn’t help but smile. It was his way of telling her that they were okay, that _he_ was okay.

“We can stop,” Tony repeated, pulling her focus back to him. “All you had to do was ask.”

She went to lift her hand to brush her hair back, remembered she couldn’t, thanks to the weight of bandages on it, and let it fall back onto the bed. Tony leaned over and did it for her. His fingers left her skin tingling in their wake.

“I have two hands, you know,” she said. To her delight and trepidation, he stayed still, bent over her, his hand against her cheek.

“Not for lack of trying,” he said, flashing her a quick smile. “Guy who attacked you had all kinds of weird, toxic bacteria in his fingernails. If he’d have attacked you in the middle of the Sahara, you’d have probably lost more than your arm.”

The humor fell flat between them, but it was nice that he had tried.

“One thing I never really accounted for was that the pain from a sparring session is _very_ different from a real fight,” she said. He smiled again, a wry one.

“Yeah.”

“Oh! I wanted to tell you,” she said, excited. “After I hurt that guy’s leg. He grabbed my hand, but my healing time dilation thing didn’t happen. I know we tested that by having me touch your chest when your wound was in your arm, but even then--”

“You did glow a little,” he finished for her. “So you can feel it? And the healing didn’t start automatically?” 

She nodded. “I wasn't in contact with him willingly, and I didn't even sense the wound. Healing is a choice.” She lifted her chin. “One I wanted to make, you know. It was a complete fluke that he landed on that thing! I was just trying to put him down, not… _down.”_ She widened her eyes for emphasis.

Tony sat down on the hospital bed in the space she’d made by crossing her legs. “There’s no way I would have let you heal that guy.” He said this in a gentle tone, but his body language screamed that he wasn’t going to back down.

“I basically sentenced him to months of rehab for grabbing my arm and trying to punch me! Why not let me make that right-- he would still end up with a fine, or serving time for the attack, wouldn’t he?”

“Would he?” Tony asked, his voice raised. “What if he went to the judge and said, look, it’s just my word against hers, and my wound isn’t fresh! I’m not even the same guy! This crazy chick doesn’t know what she did, she’s obviously lying!” He pointed somewhere vaguely behind him. “You break the law, sometimes you fuck up, and sometimes the consequences are bigger than you thought. The end.”

She took in a breath to say something, but Tony stood up and blurted something out that shocked her.

“Evie, Bruce doesn’t know how bad it was.”

Evie held up her bandaged hand wordlessly.

“I told him a thief was trying to get your phone out of your hand. He doesn’t know you were grabbed, and he certainly doesn’t know the guy had a knife.”

“That’s why he didn’t Hulk out,” she whispered.

“And why you _can’t_ testify in a trial where the results are legally public knowledge.”

Evie scoffed. “Anyone in that position would be a complete idiot if they didn’t try to sue me for their medical bills!”

Tony turned and started pacing. “That won’t happen.” Something about his tone made her understand why he sounded so certain.

“You _paid him off?”_

“What would you have done?” he half shouted.

“I wouldn’t set up a situation where I’m forced to lie to a friend!”

“Oh really?” Tony’s voice grew dangerously quiet. “Who is RDJ?”

Evie felt about an inch tall. “What?”

“Who is RDJ?” Tony asked, walking right up next to the bed and looking down at her, his brown eyes angry. He was clearly hurt, and she could do nothing differently.

“It’s a dumb in-joke with Bruce,” she said in a small voice. “I-- it shouldn’t affect you.” She’d wanted to say ‘it doesn’t affect you,’ but that was a _lie,_ and Tony was upset at her for lying, so she wasn’t going to lie _more,_ not right now.

He wasn’t stupid. “‘Shouldn’t’ is a very specific word in that situation, isn’t it? Do you know that there are only a few things JARVIS keeps from me, and when I search the SHIELD database for that combination of letters, a couple of classified videos are the _only_ things that pop up?” He scratched the side of his head, a jerky, angry movement. When he spoke again, it was with a furious twitch of a head shake, as if he was too angry to even hold onto the concept of her lies. “It’s actually kind of a security breach, because I can tell where they were filmed and who’s in the videos.” 

He was completely furious, he was hurt, and her heart ached because she was the architect of all of it.

Tony wasn’t done ranting. “They’re also the only ones I’ve been completely unable to hack my way into accessing! I’ve only known about them for a month, though. What’s your over/under on whether I’ll get into them by the time we’re both senior citizens?”

She had nothing to say.

Tony pointed at the floor, emphatically. “Anyway, _damn right_ I paid him off. No goon in Knockturn Alley is more important than Bruce’s peace of mind. It’s not about the money. It’s never about money.”

“What about blackmail?” she asked, her voice cracking.

“I’m not an amateur, Evie,” he said with a look so withering she shrank back against her pillow a little. “I only told you so you’d keep _this_ secret as expertly as the one you share with Bruce and Fury. If you don’t like keeping secrets, you shouldn’t have proven you’re so good at it.”

Tony walked toward the door, but stopped in the process of reaching out to open it. His head bowed, and she bit her lip, trying to hold back the emotion she knew would spill over as soon as he left.

“I’m not just worried about Bruce,” he said. He looked over at her, his expression inscrutable, and then he opened the door, shutting it behind him with a gentle click.


	7. Late Morning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony's idea of a teambuilding exercise before Evie's first mission is a bastardization of Truth or Dare, and after her turn, Evie feels pretty discouraged. The mission itself couldn't be more different when you're a healer waiting in the Quinjet versus watching it on a big screen in a theater!

###  Chapter Seven: Late Morning

It was with the knowledge that she was lying to the two people she cared about most that Evie got the news the whole Avengers team would be attacking a HYDRA base.

She’d learned a bit about concealment from Clint and Natasha, under the assumption that she’d only need to hide somewhere other than the Quinjet in an emergency (at which point Evie had pointed out that nearly everything they’re involved with as Avengers is an emergency, and Clint had laughed so hard Nat sent him out of the room). With her bright grey eyes and silver hair, Evie was too memorable to leave behind at a safehouse. Nat had given her a few wigs to wear, along with some contacts that gave her clear blue eyes, instead of grey, but in the end, it was decided that the jet was the safest place for her to wait.

“How’s the hand?” Steve asked her at the final prep meeting. She flexed it, showing that it was all healed, though there was one cut that looked like it would scar.

“I have a theory that if I use this one to lay on the wound I’m healing, some of the energy might rebound and help with the scarring,” she told Steve.

Steve shot a look over at Tony and then clearly changed his mind about what he’d been about to say. “I hope you don’t get a chance to find out if you’re right, tomorrow,” he said mildly.

After the meeting, Steve got in the elevator with her and asked what had happened with the heal testing.

“He found out I was getting upset about how far he was willing to push the injuries, and shut it down. All of it, though I still would have been willing to do smaller injuries.” Evie explained. She didn’t have to say who she was referring to. She also didn’t say that she missed spending so much time with Tony.

“He has a vast reserve of petulance, I gotta say,” Steve observed. “If it helps, it could have been worse.”

Evie raised her eyebrows, and Steve cleared his throat.

“Toward the beginning of your tests, he and I got to talking about something, I don’t even remember what it was. All of a sudden, he goes, ‘what if one of us gets hurt in multiple places? Does she use her feet? Her lips? Would that even work?’ And I don’t think of myself as particularly fast with the quips, but I just turned to him and asked if he wanted me to punch him in the mouth to see if you’d go for it.”

Evie burst out laughing.

“Raiders of the Lost Arc!” she said.

“That’s the one with the Nazi who burns the medallion into his hand, right?”

Evie grinned. “I’m  _ so _ glad that someone’s got your back about what to watch. I really shouldn’t be surprised that Stark would jump to that scenario, though. There’s a scene in that movie where Jones is all beat up and he tries to get the female lead to kiss all his injuries to heal them.” 

There was a companionable silence between them until the elevator nearly reached the floor she’d tapped. 

“He’s been… respectful?” Steve suddenly asked.

“I genuinely don’t know what that would look like,” Evie said without thinking.

Steve chuckled. “No, I mean--”

“Inappropriate? No. He would have been pretty stupid to try anything with the woman putting him back together for science every other day. He’s pretty, but he’s not stupid.” The elevator dinged right as she was almost done speaking, and the doors opened right on cue.

Steve looked at her appraisingly for a few seconds before nodding. “Good to know,” he said. “See ya.” He got off of the elevator, leaving Evie with the distinct impression that Steve saw it as his personal duty to look out for everyone on the team. He’d done it the first day she’d ever met him, after all.

8888888888

All anyone could talk about at dinner was Tony’s ‘three questions’ game. Instead of telling them all in an email or texted invitation, it seemed that Tony had scattered details into conversations over the course of the day. If Evie had had anything like Tony’s ego, she would have thought he was setting her up specifically to feel left out. She was the only one of them without a Tony-relayed detail for that night. He hadn’t really spoken to her for almost a week, ever since he’d come to rescue her in the alley. Ever since he’d brought up the encrypted videos that mentioned ‘RDJ.’

Evie hated being on the wrong side of Tony, but she’d come to conclude that she would be there even if she told him what he wanted to know. Every so often, the popularity and celebrity of the Avengers had come up in casual conversations with the team, and every time, someone would comment about the mentality of certain fans, the ones who pushed love of their superhero personas a little too far.

How could she ever explain to Tony that her feelings were more deeply rooted in her personal experiences with him than her pre-existing love of his character? How believable would that even be to a man who had experienced serious fame throughout all of his adult life? 

The conversation had been shifting around her as she’d sat there wallowing in her conclusions about Tony, and the subject had changed to who would be called first. Thor was confidently explaining that it would be him. Eventually he, Clint, Steve, and Bruce had all relayed their reasons why they would be first up, but Evie wasn’t so sure. The Black Widow was observing the conversation with a slight smile on her face, and once Clint had observed that, he’d sat back and stopped arguing.

She was just about to offer a bet that it would be Natasha when Tony told them all to reconvene at the couches. 

After a dramatic period of looking from Avenger to Avenger as if trying to decide who to pick, Tony finally announced, “Nat, you’re up.” When Natasha stood up and walked over to the tall stool that had been set up by the windows, quite a few of the group stared in disbelief.

“I bribe  _ very well,” _ Tony smiled. “Here are the rules: this is a modified form of Truth or Dare where I give you three options: one truth, one dare, and a wildcard. You  _ must _ choose one of the options, but that’s where the trust comes in.” Tony spun around to look at the rest of the assembled Avengers and their associates. “Nothing leaves this room. JARVIS, with a few pre-approved exceptions, will not record the results.”

Tony turned back toward Natasha and smiled. “Now, number one--”

“Don’t hosts usually ask if there are any questions?” Darcy called out.

_ “Hosts _ may,” Tony said over his shoulder with a little insolent eyebrow lift. “Number one: What’s the worst joke Clint Barton has ever told you?” Natasha’s face twisted into a grin, but Tony held up a finger. “Now, now. Wait till I’m finished. Number two:”

Natasha did  _ not _ end up choosing the option to tell Barton’s worst joke. Instead, she did a stunning ballet attack move demonstration with Thor, who was obviously winded when he got up from being knocked flat on his back. Thor was next, and he told an astonishing story about his brother and a many-legged horse that Evie vaguely remembered from Norse mythology. One by one, the Avengers were called to sit on the stool and offered a few token options along with an obvious choice which showcased something they were good at or might lend their teammates a glimpse into a new aspect of theirs.

Even Bruce, who refused to sit on the stool, got to explain an innovative part of the research he’d been working on before the attack on New York, and how he’d used what they learned there to advance it.

But, Evie had started to notice something. Everything about this ‘teambuilding exercise’ had a sheen of pre-planning to it, right down to making sure there was enough room for Nat to lay Thor flat without needing to move any of the furniture. 

Tony kept shooting her glances, though. She’d thought they were a put-on, at first. A kind of ‘are you anxious about the hot seat’ kind of look, but as each Avenger got to tell a story, wow them with a move (Clint’s archery was  _ next fucking level) _ , or show off something about themselves, Evie started to take Tony’s glances personally.

She knew him. Better now than she had before. Every single one of the Avengers had started thinking about what he might prompt them to do, she thought, everyone including herself. She knew Tony desperately wanted to hear the stories she could tell about her universe. He used to try to trick her into revealing things when they were still doing the heal tests, especially after she’d let slip about Pepper Potts. 

The  _ heal tests _ .

After watching most of the Avengers’ turns on the stool, Evie was pretty certain she knew what Tony’s plan was. He’d been working on the night’s activities for weeks, that was obvious. And weeks ago, they’d been working up to healing some seriously gnarly injuries, right up until she’d made clear that she wanted that to stop. She’d gotten hurt and shut it all down rather abruptly, and Tony might be a self-centered jerk sometimes, but he wasn’t stupid.

So what would Tony do now that he was out of options? Not back down, that was for sure. Except, he wouldn’t force her to do something she was clearly so uncomfortable with, would he?

“And, last but not least, Evie?”

An affectionate cheer rose up from the rest of the group, as Evie stood up and walked over to the stool.

“Please don’t ask me to watch you get hurt tonight,” she whispered while she was still faced away from everyone.

Tony had clearly not been expecting her to say that, and they looked at each other for a long second before he let out a breath. Then, he turned his charisma back up to eleven, swaggering back into his ‘host’ persona.

“Number one: an oldie but a goodie.” He walked over to stand between Evie and the assembled crowd. “For this one, you get up, walk over, and stand on this square,” She looked down and saw that there was an actual square marked out in painter’s tape just about six inches from where Tony was standing. “Then, you stand on one foot, hold your arms out in a T shape… and call me Tony.”

Everyone laughed.

“They’re laughing because they know it’s not going to happen,” Evie said. “Moving on?”

“Who knows, you might have to come back to it,” Tony said, walking back to stand by the stool. “Number two: who is RDJ?”

“Come on, Tony,” Bruce called out.

“It’s a dud, everyone had one,” Tony yelled back, cocky and confident. “Yours was related to the Hulk’s foot measurements, and don’t tell me you ever would have picked that.” He spun on his heel in a bit of a dance move and smiled at her. “All right then. Here is where I have a little confession. It’s something Evie’s already figured out: My plan was to ask her to do some healing, tonight.”

She looked down at the floor, so disappointed she could scarcely breathe. 

“Hey,” Tony said, nudging the spot on the floor she was staring at with his shoe. Her eyes flew up to his, flicking over to the watching group and back again. “I am saying I’m sorry. I didn’t realize what that was like from your end. I got blinded by the data.”

Evie’s heart soared, despite the audience. A second later, she knew just what to say.

“I think we can all agree that a public apology was Stark’s choice for his own display of prowess, can’t we?” Evie said, standing up and clapping. The rest of the room soon joined suit. Tony turned to make a little bow, but he shot her a look that could have seared meat.

“He picked the dud!” Thor said, right as the applause wound down. A second chorus of laughter chased through the group before Tony raised his hands to get them to stop.

“I’ve stuck Evie with three less-than-impressive options, but the alternative was to make her watch me stab myself with one of Pepper’s desk gadgets again, and as we all know, I’m against torture.” He started walking backwards, towards her. “Number three, then,” Tony said, pivoting toward her. “How do you know me, in your universe?”

He was  _ beaming _ at her, she saw. Evie shook her head, and Tony managed to say something quietly out of the corner of his mouth.

“The name thing doesn’t seem quite so outrageous now, does it?”

“Is that what you think is on those tapes?” she asked in the same quiet voice. “I choose option three,” Evie said loudly. Tony whirled to face her, obviously surprised. “I’m sorry, Mr. Stark, but I only knew  _ of _ you. On the news, that sort of thing.”

She wondered what he had thought she was going to say, because her answer made him frown, the wheels inside his head clearly turning at breakneck speed. The more surprising reaction, though, was Bruce.

“Evie,” he said, his tone full of disapproval.

“It’s true,” she insisted. “I could even go farther and say that meeting Tony Stark in my universe would be completely impossible.”

Bruce got up to walk over. He’d pushed her to tell Tony and the others about their fictional status in her universe only once before, but he’d pushed pretty hard. It seemed like he thought this was the perfect opportunity. Bruce had promised not to break her confidence about it, at least.

“I’m not  _ dead, _ am I?” Tony asked, an edge of humor in his voice.

“You’re not dead,” she said quietly. “But I was a lower middle-class psychiatric ER nurse. In a different city. It would probably have been easier for me to save up and go on an expedition to Everest than it would have been to meet a person like you.” Her gaze shifted to Bruce, and she sighed, sadly, “Either of you. It took HYDRA to drag me into your league, and I’m not even sure I belong there in this world, either. Good night.”

She pushed past the rest of the Avengers and the others who had been waiting for her response. Evie was grateful that her rooms were on the same floor as the gathering room, because she wouldn’t put it past one of them to hijack her elevator in an attempt to make her feel better. 

She didn’t  _ want _ to feel better, even though her conscience was pinging her a little. Neither man had done anything wrong, so her attitude had been unfair, but what she had said was absolutely true.

Even if the Avengers had been real in her world, a person of her means and community stature would have been fodder for the villain’s destruction and not much else. She’d been lucky enough to know the films, luckier still to love them so much, but that had just given her existence a thin veneer of normalcy to her new teammates.

For the first time since she’d been assigned her quarters in Avengers’ tower, Evie forgot to say goodnight to JARVIS.

8888888888

When it was time to head out to the Quinjet for the mission, Evie had to dig deep to find her excitement about it. Her night of self-doubt had been poorly timed, she realized, but hindsight was not going to help today. Luckily, her moping was overlooked by the others as the Quinjet was prepped for flight and the team got into the air.

Again, though, Evie had done exactly the wrong thing. She’d let the bustle and motion shield her, hiding her true emotional state just like her curtain of hair often did. Now that there was nothing to do but wait until they arrived, Evie was stuck trying to psych herself up for what was to come.

She let out a sigh.

“You two have a fight?” Clint asked, nodding over to Bruce. He was engrossed in a science journal, taking notes.

“Not really. Just feeling my mediocrity.”

Clint had been meticulously going over the gear in each pocket on his clothing, but he tucked the last of it away and turned to give her his full attention. “Tell me,” he said.

Evie looked around at the rest of the Avengers. Nat and Steve were deep in conversation, Bruce was obviously occupied, Tony was up at the controls, and Thor seemed like he was asleep. The more she thought about what to say to Clint, though, the more she felt ungrateful. Bruce would have been happy to remain an introverted scientist without an alter-ego. Natasha didn’t have a choice but to survive what she’d gone through to become the Black Widow. Who was she to complain because she felt inferior to people who worked hard as hell for what they achieved?

“I need a hobby,” she said, finally. Clint was quiet, so she turned her head to see what his expression was.

“Okay, now tell me what made you say that, instead,” he said, a ghost of a smile lighting up his features.

“It’s selfish and ungrateful and diminishes you guys’ hard work,” she muttered.

“You think I’m not used to fighting alongside someone who can be selfish?”

She smiled but shook her head, the mirth fading. “I guess I’m worried I’ll get used to this. What if my body runs out of the energy to heal? The way I got that ability isn’t exactly repeatable. Will I be given a stipend and a doctored-up job reference, and sent on my way?” she sighed. “What kind of worry is that? As if I’d rather be blown up in a nuclear accident? What is  _ wrong _ with me!”

“You ever play D&D? Or read fantasy books? There are archetypes, right?” Clint asked. He looked down at himself. “The archer. The warrior,” nodding over at Thor. “Those are characters, but then there are the people who sit down and pick what to roleplay. Most of them pick the same thing.” He nudged her with his elbow and looked over at Steve.

“Paladin, every time,” she whispered.

“Insufferable about it, too,” Clint said. “My point is, you’re in a room full of people who are used to their roles, and most of them are the same type. You’re support. You said you worked in a hospital?”

She nodded.

“How do you think a warrior’s going to feel if you stuck him in an ER and told him to be useful? Most of the time he’s going to be frustrated, right? Even if he can carry the gurneys, hold down the drunks.” 

Evie thought about what he said for a while. The nice thing about Clint was that he didn’t look expectant or uncomfortable while he waited for her to respond. Instead, he’d started digging around in the wall compartment behind him, finally pulling out, of all things, a baseball cap with an actual Avengers logo on it. He fiddled with the band for a few seconds as if testing its ability to be bent to an attractive curve.

“So, I’m feeling out of place because I’m a healer surrounded by warriors, but I’ll feel better once I realize they need me? That sounds suspiciously supportive of you, Clint.”

“Yeah, well. That’s  _ my _ hobby.” Clint’s head was aimed at the floor of the Quinjet, but Evie saw that he was actually looking at Natasha. He flipped the hand holding the hat around so it was held out to her.

“Thanks. You’re good at it,” Evie said. “What’s this for?”

He shrugged. “Something to help you know where you are, what you’re a part of.”

Fury and the team had decided not to go with any sort of armor or uniform for her, no armor because of the resonant waves she emitted during healing needed more tests to see how it would interact with restrictive, protective clothing, and no uniform because it seemed to have been accidentally overlooked. Steve did promise they’d order something for next time. It had been a genuine mistake, but it did contribute to her feelings of inadequacy today. Once again, Clint had eased that with a simple, heartfelt gesture.

8888888888

Evie tried to hold onto Clint’s words and actions when, hours later, she just had to wait in the Quinjet and hope they wouldn’t need her. 

Her earpiece was tapped into the Avenger voice channel, so at least she wasn’t completely in the dark. In theory, any injured party would be carried to the jet, and she’d be able to skip to the healing part. In practice, Evie listened to everyone battle it out and worried like hell.

_ At least my hair is already full grey, _ she thought to herself, listening.

> **Tony:** Anyone else seeing a pattern?
> 
> **Nat:** At this point I can walk straight at them and dodge the same direction every time without worrying I’ll get hit
> 
> **Steve:** Don’t get complacent
> 
> **Steve:** All right, I’m through the door.

Evie caught onto some of their patterns. For one, she never heard Clint unless he needed to inform the others about something really important. It made sense, he was basically quiet death. Noise made him less effective. Thor was another who didn’t seem to use the comms, but she could hear him speaking with the others if he was nearby and they’d triggered theirs. 

That was another thing-- Tony was bad at mic management. She knew from the films that he was in constant communication with JARVIS, but there was a lot of chatter from his comm. Given the tension between Steve and Tony, it made sense that the team had to just accept this as part of Iron Man’s quirks. Evie bounced between feeling stressed out and grateful that she could hear more of his transmissions. She wasn’t worried about danger as much as she was about the unexpected, but both values were more than zero.

From the mission brief Evie knew that, though they usually kept Bruce back at the jet until absolutely necessary, this time they needed his strength to get inside the complex. As per their intel, this base had been expanded, but the original entrance complete with rusted port-style door remained.

Whoever ran the place had just left that door there, assuming there wasn’t anyone alive who could manage to get it open.

> **Tony:** Coming in. Thor, you wanna just zap the rest of these brainwashed slugs?
> 
> **Thor:** Agreed, tell me when you’re all clear of the metal surface!
> 
> **Nat:** Clear, and Clint is nowhere near

Evie had never realized just how much she relied on Tony’s intonation when judging his well-being until she was in a situation where all she  _ had _ was intonation.

> **Steve:** Tony, there’s something strange with the--
> 
> **Tony:** I’ve got--
> 
> **Steve:** Tony?
> 
> **Tony:** No, these guys are just like the others, just with a second--
> 
> **Nat:** We’ve got the files. Lead guy down here looks like he chewed a cyanide pill. We’re leaving him
> 
> **Steve:** Moving out to provide cover, Nat
> 
> **Tony:** Are these guys seriously just going to stand there like bowling pins?

In the movies, when something went wrong, there was a build up to it. Frantic comm calls, a unique view of the obstacle, etc.

In reality, Evie had no warning. There was simply a huge explosion in the direction of the team. It was so loud, magnified by each Avenger whose device was near enough to transmit it, that she had to rip off the comm and hold her ear in pain. That pain morphed into a different kind when, from the floor, the receiver still relayed the frantic and distressed sounds of the Avengers calling out to each other.

After only a few seconds, there was only one name on their lips.

Tony.

Evie sprang into action. She pulled out the gurney that locked into place so that a wounded person could be kept steady while the Quinjet flew. Each team member had a kit of supplies that were as tailored as possible to their particular fighting style and armor, if any. Tony’s had modular plates to fill in gaps if any piece of his armor was removed. It also had tools to pry the metal away from his body if it got deformed, as unlikely an event as that was.

With every step, every movement of her hands, Evie was chanting in her head.

_ Tony, please be okay. You have to be okay. I need you to be okay, Tony. _

Everyone who worked in an ER at some point in their life worried about whether their emotions would overwhelm their professionalism. She had been no different. But with long hours, distant family, no long-term relationship, and no siblings, it wasn’t ever really a  _ present _ concern for her. Not until now.

Soon, the sounds of the team from the flung earpiece were drowned out by the sounds of the team running up to the Quinjet. With a deep breath, Evie closed her eyes and pictured a heavy warehouse-style garage door sliding down between her worries and her responsibilities. Then, her eyes snapped open, and she was ready.

Thor was carrying Tony, who was awake, but groggy. His faceplate was gone, whether to communicate with him or because it had gotten destroyed, she didn’t know. His left leg-- looked bad. So did the arm on the same side.

“I don’t understand how the suit didn’t protect against this,” Steve said.

“The one wall, the one that exploded out, it was covered with moss, but what if that wasn’t moss? It didn’t come off like moss, and there’s some of it caked into his suit,” Clint pointed out.

“Best to remove the suit, then. Are there containers we can store it in so this substance does not harm the Quinjet?” Thor said.

Evie had to wait and watch as her teammates carefully removed the affected sections of suit, but she was grateful for their diligence. So, it seemed, was Tony.

“Smart of me to make sure it assembles in pieces,” Tony said, the words halting as he took quick, harsh breaths between words. “Head hurts.”

Evie reached out her hand, for him, but she stopped at Clint’s crow of, “We’ve got it, we’ve got it!” when they finally removed the offending sections.

She laid her hand on Tony’s calf, feeling mutinously grateful that he’d forced her through three weeks of self-inflicted wounds so that she was somewhat inured by this real one. She’d barely started visualizing before someone pulled her hand away. The monitor for his blood pressure was going off.

“Too much for him, the flow; it’s making the arm wound unstable,” Clint said.

“We never tested what to do when he had  _ two _ severe injuries,” Evie realized aloud.

“Possibly three,” Nat said. She grimaced as she held Tony’s head steady with one hand on either side of his face.

Evie was reminded of the joking conversation she’d had with Steve, the one about the Indiana Jones movie. He’d mentioned a comment Tony had made--

“All right, here’s what we’re going to do. Thor, can you lift him one more time? I need him on the floor.”

With a care as gentle as his movements were swift, Thor moved Tony to the floor of the Quinjet. As soon as he was in a steady position, held that way by their teammates, Evie reached out with both hands. She couldn’t really reach both wounds easily.

“Shit, not quite,” she said. She started stripping off her pants.

“Uhh,” Bruce said, looking up from the blood pressure monitor.

“Bare skin,” Evie explained. She tried again, this time lying beside Tony on the floor, one hand on his arm injury, her bare leg hovering over Tony’s leg wound. “Hold me down, will you Bruce?”

It was a testament to the stress of the situation that not one person made a comment. She was sure they were trading looks, but that wasn’t her concern.

She positioned herself again, nodded to Bruce, and then at the last moment, Evie changed hands, choosing to rest her right hand on Tony’s left arm so she could reach up and rest her left hand on his head. She wasn’t entirely sure where the head wound  _ was-- _

The time dilation she always felt when healing was intense this time, magnified. Evie felt nauseated and dizzy at the same time; she saw the process of healing both the burns and crush damage from the places the suit gave way under the force of the explosion. She realized her physical reactions were sympathetic, from his head wound, and quickly set healing in motion for his leg and arm, pouring energy into both so that Tony’s natural healing processes could be boosted. Then, she focused on his head.

It was a bad concussion, but the intricacies of repairing brain tissue were so complicated that Evie felt as dazed and sick as Tony probably did. She took it slow, making sure to flow enough rejuvenating energy to the other wounds which now merely needed to complete a zipper-like finishing process. Carefully and meticulously, she coaxed Tony’s head injury through the steps toward full recovery. She was grateful it was her and not someone else; there were multiple paths, here, and some of them involved a brute force approach that might have left lasting damage. Tony was too valuable for that, and not just to her personally.

Evie didn’t know how long she remained sunk into the healing process, but she was almost done with the intricate, fussy procedure of repairing his head injury when she was pulled bodily away. 

As soon as she was no longer touching Tony, Evie forgot how to breathe.

“Get a mask on her!” Bruce yelled, and she heard the strange doubling tone in his voice she’d heard before. The mask helped, as did her body’s own natural instincts to breathe. Her chest hurt like  _ hell, _ though, enough that she wondered if something had fallen on her while she was healing or something.

Evie turned her head and couldn’t understand how she was lying next to Tony, because he was injured and on the floor, and she wasn’t. Bruce sounded upset, still, but she’d healed Tony, so what was the problem?

“Just sleep,” Natasha whispered in her ear. Her hands were gentle, brushing back the wild tangle of Evie’s hair with soft, rhythmic strokes. “You did it. He’s stable. Sleep.”

Her relief combined with everything else carried Evie off into unconsciousness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thought you all would be reassured to know the story is finished, now! It's 73,000 words, 15 chapters and a post-credits scene. I know sometimes knowing a person did something quickly can imply that they did it poorly, but hopefully by now you aren't under that impression. I am pretty blown away by the speed with which this story exited my brain, though. I started it on February 5th, and finished it on February 23rd. I should really call it Athena!
> 
> See you in two days for a big twist chapter!


	8. Noon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony starts acting strangely, which culminates in a shocking reprise of Three Questions.

### Chapter Eight: Noon

“You really should watch it,” Bruce said for the second time that afternoon, the third time that day, and at least the fifteenth time in the past four days.

“Life would be more fun for you if you just accepted that I am the most stubborn,” Evie said, pushing off to spin her chair around again. In the days since the mission, every single Avenger had pushed her to watch the video of her healing on the Quinjet. She’d been told that the glow was teal, which was too far along the spectrum of severity than she wanted to see, no matter how ‘pretty’ that might look.

The truth was, she’d blocked out her emotions while she was healing that day, and Evie wasn’t sure she could watch the video without feeling everything she’d pushed to the side. She didn’t think she could handle it. Not only that, but she hadn’t been that confident she could be around Tony, either, so she’d gotten creative. Besides the debrief, she hadn’t seen him since the Quinjet.

“‘The _most_ stubborn?’ That kind of claim demands evidence,” Tony said, walking into the lab as if she’d conjured him up.

Evie put her foot down to stop the chair at the exact right point: faced away from Tony. She allowed herself exactly two seconds to smile the way her heart wanted to, hearing him vital, snarky, healthy, _himself._ She’d really missed him.

Evie opened her eyes to see that Bruce was raising an eyebrow at her. She frowned at him, her cheeks flaming. He’d been so engrossed in his paperwork she didn’t think he would turn around and see her.

“What kind of evidence, _Mister_ Stark?” she asked, highlighting her proof of stubbornness in refusing to use his name.

Her chair sank a bit under the weight of Tony’s arms, and she glanced up to see him fully dressed in the suit, sans faceplate. Just like in the Quinjet. Evie froze in place, and he immediately saw what her issue was.

“Shit. I wasn’t-- Hold on,” Tony said, pulling off his helmet and gauntlets and tossing them onto an empty desk. His helmet rolled off onto the floor.

She got up and rushed over to pick up what he’d thrown. “Well don’t ruin your gear, it’s just the first time I’ve seen you since, you know…” Evie gestured to him from head to toe before dusting the pieces off and frowning at a scuff mark. Tucking the gauntlets under her arms, she lifted up a corner of her t-shirt and scrubbed at the mark on his helmet.

 _“Hyacinth,”_ Tony said, gently. 

She shivered. Something about the way he said that name made her feel nervous and excited, all at once. No one else used it anymore, so it almost felt like _his_ name for her. Tony had never given her a nickname, despite his habit of doing so for others. 

“What?” she asked, still intent on buffing the scuff mark.

“Will you hand those back? We don’t have a second Evie to heal you if the repulsors start firing.” He came towards her slowly, as if a sudden move might set them off. Evie wasn’t sure if he was being overly cautious or what. She’d thought those particular suit features had to be powered by his ARC reactor.

“Another healer… That’s one of the reasons we’re looking, though, isn’t it? For the other guy.”

One of Tony’s robots came over to hold out a tray for the rest of his suit. “Yeah, about that. I don’t think that’s what they were going for. The goons at the complex acted like they had their brains scooped out and an identical set of instructions installed in their place.”

“The one that’s in the wind, he was a psychiatrist?” Bruce asked, turning his chair around and adjusting his glasses.

Tony nodded. “Evie was the only healer on the tapes--”

“So you finally watched them? And you _still_ think I’m not the most stubborn one in the room?” Evie interjected.

The look Tony shot her was heated, and her body reacted as though the source of that heat was interest, not irritation. He must have sensed something, because he tipped his head sideways, eyes tracing her as if gathering information. Evie felt a bit caught in that look, even though the longer she stood there wanting him, the more likely he could figure that out. It didn’t help that he looked fantastic in the Iron Man suit.

“What’s the word on his location?” Bruce asked, completely oblivious.

“Much as I am enjoying this conversation, it’s time for me to go pretend I can kick Thor’s ass,” Evie said.

“I thought those were in the morning?”

She stopped in her tracks, turning to look at Tony. “You keep track of my schedule?”

“I got called to rescue you from an alley when you were supposed to be safe and sound in the gym with Thor. It was kind of memorable.”

His response was flippant, almost defensive, which was strange. She would have expected him to give her shit, not act like she’d caught him doing something wrong. His odd reaction made her think more about what he said, which then had her pointing at him proudly.

“You’re wrong, I wouldn’t have been. Thor canceled.”

“You are both hereby evicted, I can’t work like this.”

Evie and Tony shared an amused look of shock as Bruce shooed them both out. In the hallway, Tony started talking to her, but she pretended she was late and fled.

8888888888

After that, it seemed like Tony was stalking her like a predator. He was at every group dinner and in the lab with Bruce almost every time she visited. Every time he saw her, Tony would hint about wanting some coffee and goad her about. The problem was that he never actually told her what he wanted her to order! She’d finally given in and asked around until she found out, which hadn’t been easy, because apparently Tony had _also_ given strict instructions to JARVIS not to reveal it. So, on a morning three full weeks after the mission, Evie decided to bring him a coffee along with hers and Bruce’s tea. 

Naturally, because of her luck lately, that meant he wasn’t in the lab when she got there.

“It figures,” she said, handing Bruce his tea. “Though, it didn’t occur to me that maybe Stark finally got sick of me being here every day, instead of the opposite being true. Sorry about that, I know you don’t like coffee that much. Maybe one of the assistants will drink it?”

“I’m not missing anything except an opportunity to watch the two of you circle each other,” Bruce said, crouching down to examine some equipment. “He shows up ten minutes before you do, and leaves about five minutes after.”

Evie was so distracted by what he had just told her that she tried to take a sip of her coffee without flipping the lid open. True to form, Mario’s lid didn’t budge.

“Maybe he just, I don’t know, likes to make sure you’re here every day,” she said, putting the cup down. It sounded weak, though.

“Evie,” Bruce started to say.

“No, seriously, there has to be another explanation.”

Bruce didn’t get a chance to say anything else because Tony came breezing in.

“Guys, there is a lonely cup from my favorite coffee shop just _sitting there_ without anyone drinking it, does anyone else notice this?”

“Yeah, I don’t know what happened, must have been a double order,” Evie said, rolling her eyes. “If you know anyone who likes--”

Tony swooped in and grabbed the cup, making an exaggerated sound of pure delight at the first sip. “That is my exact favorite drink! How on Earth did that happen?” he said, looking intently at Evie.

“I hope it’s everything you dreamed of after all the grief you put me through goading me to go get it for you,” she said, crossing her arms.

“Oh it is. Very illuminating,” he said. His attitude was almost conspiratorial, and Evie wasn’t in on why. It seemed like Bruce wasn’t either, because he made a face and went out to talk to one of the lab techs. She thought maybe Tony was about to reveal what was going on, but he got derailed. “So-- wait. Why are your eyes blue?” Tony asked, setting down his precious coffee and coming over to look.

“Oh, shoot, I forgot to take the contacts out,” she said, digging into her jeans pocket for the zippered holder she had for their case.

“But why do you have any in the first place?” he asked, following her back to Bruce’s desk.

She set Bruce’s papers to the side, careful not to shuffle them or otherwise ruin any order he might have them in. “Natasha’s idea.” Evie expertly removed each contact to place them in the case. Tony was still frowning at her when she was done. “What? You may be used to everyone staring at you, Mr. genius billionaire playboy philanthropist, but I’m just an ordinary nurse dealing with a sudden, unexpected makeover.”

“Ordinary,” Tony said, overexaggerating a head tipped-back thinking pose. “Nope. Don’t think so.” He walked backwards over to the counter and grabbed his coffee. “You know, I’m not sure anyone is truly ordinary?” He sat down on Bruce’s chair and gestured to his work as if that proved his point.

“That’s because they’re all on their best behavior with you. You’re Tony Stark, who wouldn’t be?” Evie said.

Bruce reappeared from the side lab he’d gone off to, and the first thing he said was, “Tony, if you spill that on my pages--”

“You’ll what?” Tony challenged, with a flick of his head to the side and a look at Evie like he was saying, ‘see, _he’s_ treating me like a regular person.’

“I’ll make you send the grad student who’s relying on my analysis a grant for the next ten years of her work,” Bruce finished, trading places with Evie and sliding his papers back where they were.

 _“Definitely_ an ordinary interaction, right there,” she said, enjoying the chance to watch Tony squirm. He hated being wrong. “Bruce, what’s her proposal about?”

“Long version or short version?” Bruce asked, looking between the two of them.

“Yeah, okay, I’m privileged,” Tony said, rolling his eyes. “I’m exercising that. See you tomorrow.”

“Stop stalking me, weirdo,” she got up the courage to say.

“Make me!” Tony tossed over his shoulder as he walked out of the lab.

“What’s that, now? Zero for two on emphatic, ‘this is definitely how things are’ conclusions?” Bruce asked her.

“Oh, shut up,” Evie said. 

She left the lab to get on the elevator and head down to her floor. There was a folder full of records she’d volunteered to digitize for Nat, mostly sensitive HYDRA stuff, but nothing about her own case. With SHIELD having been infiltrated, there were fewer agents they were willing to give the more recent things, and even then, a lot of the data would be redacted. It wasn’t the kind of work she was used to doing, but it was something. She sat down at the desk and scanned her fingerprint to wake her computer. Within seconds, a message popped up.

> **IronMA]ide[N:** I know you said to stop talking to you but something came up
> 
> **IronMA]ide[N:** It’s in the interests of my company and the team’s reputation that you stop rolling your eyes and listen to me. I need a favor

She _had_ been rolling her eyes, and on reading what he wrote, Evie swore under her breath and started typing.

> **((HyVie)):** I’m pretty sure JARVIS isn’t meant to be used to spy on your teammates, so you are on pretty thin ice to be asking for a favor.
> 
> **IronMA]ide[N:** Are you one of those people who uses punctuation on everything, or are you using it for emphasis?
> 
> **((HyVie)):** ...
> 
> **IronMA]ide[N:** Okay, okay. There’s a thing I have to go to. I’ve been kind of holed up for a while. The press is convinced I’m working on some sort of product, I’ve got Senators demanding a briefing if I’m implementing some new Avengers thing, it’s crazy
> 
> **IronMA]ide[N:** (see, no period at the end, there)

“JARVIS, how much sleep has he gotten in the past 48 hours?”

> _=No less than twelve.=_

Evie leaned back and looked at the ceiling. “Is he checking up on what you say to me, too, J? You’re usually a bit more snarky than that.”

> _=Your assessment is… not inaccurate.=_

> **((HyVie)):** Whatever it is, the answer is no unless you stop leashing JARVIS.
> 
> **IronMA]ide[N:** I’m not-- is that what he told you? It’s not LEASHING, it’s me being a nosy, conceited asshole
> 
> **IronMA]ide[N:** I didn’t think he’d tell you. I asked him to let me know if-- Wait, this is on dictation. J.A.R.V.I.S., I don’t want this on dictation
> 
> **IronMA]ide[N:** Oh, I get it. You’re not going to turn it off 
> 
> **IronMA]ide[N:** Okay, but for the record, I wasn’t *checking up on* what you were saying to J.A.R.V.I.S., all right? You were… this is-- Where’s a keyboard? Can I just

Evie was reading it, but she could _hear_ him. She kind of loved that he was _Tony,_ even in text. With a few clicks, she brought up the file she’d planned on looking through as she waited for him to hook up a keyboard or give up searching. It took at least five minutes.

> **IronMA]ide[N:** I wanted to make sure you were okay, OK?

She looked at the words on the screen, her heart doing flip flops in her chest. To stop herself from typing anything she’d regret, Evie got up and went into the kitchenette to get some ice water. 

> **IronMA]ide[N:** See, and since I’m not supposed to ask J.A.R.V.I.S. what you’re doing, or if you’re reading this, I’m just sitting here hoping you didn’t just leave to go take a shower or something
> 
> **IronMA]ide[N:** fjdsaliffweosaljfdlaa
> 
> **((HyVie)):** I’m here, what do you need?
> 
> **IronMA]ide[N:** The blue contacts gave me an idea
> 
> **IronMA]ide[N:** Come with me to this gala thing so literally everyone can get off my back? You could wear contacts and a wig, use a fake name, it’d be fun

“I don’t want to hold this conversation over text. JARVIS, will you do me a favor and _not_ tell him that I’m coming down there?”

> _=I can avoid informing him until you reach the door of the penthouse, Miss Adams. However, I will be unable to let you in without his permission.=_

“Oh, I thought he was in his lab. Uh… Okay.”

All of a sudden she felt a chill. Evie had wanted to go down to the lab they’d done the heal testing in, banter a bit with him, and judge whether she wanted to do what he asked based on that interaction.

Going up to his penthouse had a completely different vibe.

She gritted her teeth, slipped her sandals back on, and reached into her closet to grab a soft jacket to pull over the short-sleeved shirt she was wearing. As she rode up in the elevator, she rolled up the sleeves a bit, but drew the line at putting up the hood.

Evie was gathering up her courage to knock or ask JARVIS to announce her when the door was yanked open from the inside and Tony almost walked right into her. His hands came up to stop her from falling, looking at first confused, then strangely _joyful,_ as if he’d come to some hidden conclusion at the sight of her.

Tony backed up, still looking at her with that odd smile. He pointed behind him with a thumb. “Come in? I was about to send an army of robots to see why you’d disappeared.”

“I didn’t want to text,” she said. It sounded like a stupid excuse, but he just led her inside without commenting on it. “Wow. There’s a _lot_ of glass in here. The person who designed it knows you’re _you,_ right?”

“Yep,” he murmured. “Exactly right.” Then, louder, “Hmm? Oh. I like the way it opens everything up. Plus, someone has to keep the glass companies in business.”

“You’re performing a public service,” she said sagely.

Tony turned to grin at her as he led her down a flight of stairs to a living room kind of space.

His very Tony-ness was threatening to overwhelm her, but she straightened her internal spine and looked out at the truly spectacular view. She glanced back at him and saw that, instead of admiring the view, he was looking at her.

“What?” Evie asked, rubbing her hands on her upper arms, trying to warm them up inside the jacket.

Tony nodded toward her jacket. “I was wondering where that was. Back when I was trying to get you to keep the clothes I bought, I used to store them in my closet between attempts. I sent my housekeeper down with them last time, I guess she grabbed that too.” He regarded her with a warm gaze that made her feel really attractive. “Looks good on you.”

Evie glanced down and saw the things she hadn’t noticed when she’d thrown it on-- grey on black camo, bright orange accents. She stretched her arms out and showed him how, even rolled up, her arms were still pretty short for the sleeves. Not trusting herself to say anything else, she started to unzip it so she could give it back to him.

“No, please,” he held up a hand. “I haven’t had a woman strip her clothes off for me in here for months, I’ve got a streak going,” Tony said.

“Sooooo many things I could say right now,” Evie said. “Look, I came here to see if you were serious. To watch your face when you told me about this event, if that makes any sense.”

He sat down and rested his upper arms beside him on the couch, letting his forearms dangle. “It does.” Tony pulled his transparent phone out of his pocket and tapped on it for a few seconds. “Association of Patrons for the Advancement of, I don’t know, snooty films or art, not sure which. My eyes glaze over. I’m invited every year, haven’t gone in a while, it’s got their board a little testy. I saw you wearing those contacts and thought you might want to dress up like your old self. Contacts, wig, the whole thing.”

“My old self… I don’t think you want me to wear scrubs to this thing, Stark.”

“Don’t throw the walls up, you didn’t spend every waking moment in the ER,” he said quietly. “This is _me._ Give in. Have fun.” Tony set down the phone and pressed his hands together in front of him like a child praying.

Pushing back against him was exhausting, and he _knew it,_ damn him. “Fine. I would be honored. Delighted. Terrified.”

Tony bounced up out of the couch and clapped, once. “Excellent. And don’t forget, tonight’s a sequel of the Three Questions.”

“Ugh, really? I think I’m coming down with something,” Evie said, starting up the stairs. Stark didn’t say anything until she was at the top. She was glad, because the sing-song voice he used made her almost want to start heal testing again just so she could hit him over the head with something.

“Truth is good for the soul, Hyacinth!”

8888888888

There were fewer people at dinner than usual, which was good, because she was full of nervous energy after what she’d promised to do. Part of her wanted to go all in-- maybe not as her original self, but as a woman free to accept Tony’s attention and return it. Evie would have skipped the night’s dinner to give herself some time to process the implications of his invitation, but she didn’t want to draw more attention by her absence.

During the meal, Tony asked her to tell them more about the differences between the two universes, and he didn’t pick up on her hints that it wasn’t a good time. Eventually, she let her frustration with him show, and it was _awkward._ By the time they all adjourned to the family room area, she was over the whole day and just wanted to go to sleep.

Employing a trick she used at home to get away from her mother’s rants, Evie took her shoes off and left them somewhere visible, then walked over to the window. Her plan was to slip away in a few minutes. With any luck, her teammates and friends would assume she wouldn’t leave her shoes behind for the night, and would therefore come back.

Bruce walked up to stand beside her a few minutes before she was about to head to her room. “Would it be nagging if I asked you how you’re sleeping?” he asked quietly.

“Not really. It’s not sleep related, it’s Stark related, today,” Evie admitted. “I don’t think he realizes what he’s doing, every time he pushes for me to talk about what’s different.”

“It’s hitting you deeper than it looks, you’re saying.”

Evie nodded. “You want to know the biggest change for me? My _family._ ” She turned to completely face the window. “That universe has twenty odd more people related to me than this one does. I saw the file. HYDRA even killed some of my _second cousins._ Just on the off chance that the larger disparity between the two universes might make my powers stronger. I might not have been that close with them anymore, but it still took time to get used to being the sole survivor. I don’t dare look up any of the more distant relatives for fear it’ll be their death sentence, too.”

“I didn’t know,” Bruce whispered, stunned. He let out a long, slow breath, walking away from her for a few steps in a circle, before coming back, fully facing her. Now his voice was firm. “You should say something to him.”

“No, I shouldn’t,” Evie said sadly. “It would just make it worse. He doesn’t let up! When Stark’s fixated on something, his alligator grip doesn’t release until he’s spun the whole issue out into chunks in the water. If I tell him, it’ll hurt both of us, because he still won’t be able to let go.” She leaned her head back and closed her eyes for a few seconds. “I’m through seeing him upset if I can help it.” Letting out a breath similar to Bruce’s earlier, Evie opened her eyes and said, brightly, “Just do me a favor and stop me if I change my mind and ask you to say something to him. I’m preemptively nixing that.”

“I don’t think that’ll be an issue,” Bruce said, his attention caught by something over her shoulder. When she looked, though, no one was there.

“Bruce?”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “You heading back, then?”

“Yeah, I’m just… wrung out. See you tomorrow.”

Ordinarily, Evie would have made some kind of affectionate gesture, but Bruce looked contemplative, and that often meant that the Other Guy was closer to the surface. She respected how hard her friend worked at controlling himself, and one of the ways he did that was to severely limit his physical contact with others.

It was with that sobering thought that she headed for the door to the residence hallway. The door was locked.

“JARVIS, can you unlock this?” she said, grateful that the door was far enough away from the rest of the group that no one could overhear them.

> _=I am unable to unlock the door at this time.=_

“Seriously, J?” Evie said. She leaned her forehead against the door, groaning.

> _=Mr. Stark has exercised a protocol to contain his guests to the common areas this evening. He was quite insistent. I apologize for the inconvenience.=_

“I miss when we were buds, JARVIS.”

> _=I am sorry to have lost a spot in your good graces.=_

“Well, so has your boss, today. I am tired of people, and want to go to bed.” She slid down the wall and sat with her legs sticking out and her arms crossed. “I guess I’ll just sit here and wait until the gathering is over, then. If you know what’s good for you, JARVIS, you won’t go tattling to Stark about where I am.”

> _=The best I can do is promise not to volunteer that information unprompted.=_

Frustrated, Evie didn’t respond. Feeling the need to give JARVIS the silent treatment was the perfect capper for a stressful day, that was for sure. She started focusing on her breathing. Bruce had taught her a lot about meditation, and one of the things he’d said about it really resonated today. He’d told her not to wait until she ‘felt like’ meditating, if she really wanted to get a benefit.

Tonight was a perfect time to put that into practice.

8888888888

“There you are!”

It was Tony. Evie opened her eyes and blinked rapidly to adjust to the light. By her watch, it had been forty minutes since she’d first sat on the floor.

“You missed almost all of Three Questions,” he said, frowning.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Stark, but I’m not sure I missed anything,” she said.

Tony crouched down and looked her straight in the eye. “I think you’re holding something back, and it’s eating you up. Humor me, okay? It’ll make you feel better.”

“You mean it’ll make _you_ feel better.”

“I’m counting on it,” he muttered, straightening up to a stand and holding out a hand for her.

“What can I bribe you with to get you to let me skip this?” Evie asked, making no move to get up, with his help or otherwise. Deep down, her infatuated heart was reveling in his attention, and his next words made that familiar spark of desire flare to life.

“Call me Tony.” He smirked.

“Ugh I walked _right_ into that, didn’t I?” Evie grumbled. 

As soon as they walked into the open-area that surrounded the family room space, Tony crowed, “Found her!

“Honestly, if you all want to head back and avoid being forced to participate in this little war of attrition…” she told them.

“Don’t listen to her, I need you for the peer pressure. Evie, sit down on the stool, everyone else? Get ready to have your minds blown,” Tony said expansively, shrugging back into his showman persona. The rest of the team and the others were all bunched up in groups, chatting, and turned to watch what Tony was doing.

Steve stood up and looked at her, raising his eyebrow. It felt like he was asking if she wanted him to step in, but she didn’t know how to answer that, so she looked down. Apparently, that was enough of a hint for Steve.

“It looks like there’s some conflict resolution going on, here. Tony, if you need an audience, you’ve got me and Bruce. Everyone else, have a good night.” Steve’s tone was final, and everyone picked up on it.

“Sure. Fine. _I’ve_ got nothing to hide,” Tony said, his tone curt and defensive. He stood directly in front of her, between where Steve and Bruce had walked up to rest against the couch. The mood in the room was tense as the others left. Finally, it was just the four of them.

“Is it still worth doing, Tony?” Steve asked, standing up straight instead of leaning on the couch.

“Guaranteed.”

She felt like she was looking at Pharaoh's son, full of confidence and hubris, right before Moses released the sea. “Stark, what’s this about?”

He pointed at her. “Number one: Who is RDJ, and how is he related to me?”

“Tony, _I_ don’t even know the answer to that!” Bruce burst out.

“She does.”

Evie sighed. “If I told you it shouldn’t matter to you--”

“‘Shouldn’t,’ again.” Tony cut in, making exaggerated quotation marks with his fingers. All of the harshness suddenly bled out of his tone as he said, “Let me be the judge of that, Hyacinth.”

His use of that name never failed to make her inwardly giddy, but using it _now_ felt like a rebuke and a caress, all at once.

“Number two:” Tony said, walking over to her and leaning over to murmur, “Your favorite.” Straightening up, he walked around behind her. “Call me Tony. Just address me by my name. No insults, no last names, just like you do with Bruce or Steve.”

Evie rolled her eyes. She could see that both named men were equally unimpressed.

“What is the point of this?” Bruce asked, starting toward them.

“You’ll see, when she picks something.” Tony walked out to the middle of the room and held his hand up. When Bruce didn’t immediately stop, he added, “Trust me.”

Bruce stood still.

“Well, I picked the third one last time. Hit me with it,” Evie said, making eye contact with Tony as he spun around to look at her. His expression was cocky; it was obvious he thought he’d trapped her in some way.

“Number three,” he said, letting out a breath like she’d seen him do when he was psyching himself up for a fight. He raised his chin, grinned like he’d already won, and said, “Kiss me.”


	9. Afternoon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony has an astonishing hypothesis about Evie. In the wake of that revelation, a mysterious video causes concern.

### Chapter Nine: Afternoon

She couldn’t have heard him right. Evie almost wished she could access her time dilation just so she could steal away enough seconds to process it.

“What the _hell,_ Tony?” Steve objected.

“That’s crossing a line, Stark,” Bruce said quietly. He slapped his hand down on the opposite wrist, roughly removing his watch. Bruce only wore it when he didn’t think there was a chance of Hulking out.

“She doesn’t have to pick that one,” Tony said magnanimously, his eyes bright with manic energy.

“Oh, my God. This is about your name, isn’t it?” Evie realized. Astonishment mixed with the adrenaline in her veins and froze in place, stiffening her body. The level Tony was willing to go to win _stunned_ her.

“He doesn’t get to demand control over what you say or do,” Bruce growled. “That’s _coercion._ ” That last word rumbled with the dual intensity that showed Bruce was about to lose control.

Her heart racing, Evie looked at Bruce and Tony. Ideally, she wanted to thwart Tony’s ridiculous determination to win their battle over his name _and_ to prevent Bruce’s meltdown. Bruce knew how she felt about Tony, even if she’d never truly confirmed it. He could be persuaded to believe that she _wanted_ the kiss. And she did. But what she wanted even more than that was to show Tony Goddamned Stark that he didn’t get to use his ridiculous charisma and sex appeal to get his way. Not with her. He probably expected that if she didn’t use his name right off the bat, then she would choose to kiss him to avoid the RDJ question. He planned for her to be overcome by that experience, immediately launch into using his first name, and then BOOM, he would ‘win.’ After all, who would be willing to kiss a person but not use their first name?

“You think you’re so clever? All right, I pick the option where I don’t have to tell you a damned thing. No secrets, no name,” Evie said, standing up. Steve was looking at all three of them in turn. Bruce had already clenched both fists, his watch forgotten on the floor.

“What did you say?” Tony asked, clearly surprised. Every line of his body was in tension, even his fingers.

“I pick Option Three.”

He regarded her for a long moment. Then, Tony strode toward her, not stopping until he’d slid his fingers into her hair with one hand. He stood there for a few seconds just staring into her eyes as if waiting for her to renege, now that she knew he was serious.

Then, Tony bent his head and took her mouth like he had every right to, using his hand to angle her head for better access. There was no easing into the experience, no adjustment period for the intimate knowledge of how he tasted, the curl of his tongue against hers. His other hand slid against her back and pulled her body close, again with no hesitation. Tony’s confidence was drugging and completely, utterly justified. 

Evie’s body was on fire, every nerve ending lit up. She understood now why people blurted out romantic confessions in the midst of a moment like this, because she had never been more certain of her feelings. He was touching her like he knew her, as expertly as with his own machines. Tony’s thumb swept up to hold her open for him and she made a tiny, plaintive noise. He seemed to like the sound because the hand on her back slid lower, pressing her closer, and Tony made a sound of his own.

As much as she was enjoying it, Evie realized Tony was taking charge, that this could be a final, underhanded attempt to ‘win’ their battle of wills. Up until that moment, she’d let him lead her, but now Evie arched up, giving in to her desire to actively touch him. Evie dragged her fingernails through the hair on the back of his neck, drawing him deeper. She felt as well as heard his reaction to this, a low, pleased rumble deep in his chest. Tony kissed his way from her lips to her neck and murmured something.

“I was right.”

Evie pulled back, adrenaline warring with pleasure as she looked at him, confused. To his credit, Tony stilled, letting her step away.

“I knew it,” Tony said, stubbornness and victory written all across his face. He shook his head just once, obviously proud of his conclusion. “You’re mine.”

Her stomach dropped, heart exulting in the idea as her mind rebelled. She’d forgotten they had an audience, but Steve reminded her by speaking up in a voice full of righteous indignation.

“Stark, I know I’ve got some antiquated ideas about relationships, but--” 

Tony whirled around to face Steve, one arm pointing back at her. “In her universe. She’s, I don’t know-- my wife, girlfriend, _something._ I don’t know why they’ve tried to hide it from me, but--”

“Oh, my God,” Evie said, all the joy from what she’d just shared with him melting away into a flood of embarrassment. For one shining second, she thought about what her life could be like if she agreed, but then she remembered the encrypted videos, and that Fury and Bruce both knew better. “No.”

 _“Yes.”_ Tony walked back over to her and looked her intently in the eyes, grabbing one of her hands and placing it on his chest, over his heart. “Maybe I’m not the same me, but you don’t have to do this. You--”

 _“Tony,”_ she said, needing to stop him but completely unable to prevent her whole heart into the name. “Stop.”

His brown eyes were earnest and affectionate. “You expect me to believe we’re not anything to each other? You know me, and you’re at _least_ as stubborn as I am.” He grinned, pulling her hand up to his lips to kiss it. “So, what? Did I save your life during the New York thing? I mean, I know I saved everyone’s lives, with flying the nuke and all that but I mean _personally._ Is that how we met? Was there swooning?”

“I want to go check on Bruce. He went down to the Rec Room to decompress. Are you okay? Do you need an escort back to your place?” Steve asked. The Rec Room was what they called the room built to contain the Hulk until they could gas him into unconsciousness. If Bruce had gone down there, he was genuinely concerned about transforming.

“I’ll be fine. I mean, I have to persuade Tony he’s wrong, so that might take a whole lifetime right there, but I’m not in danger or anything. Tell Bruce I’m fine?” Evie said, closing her eyes while she spoke so she didn’t have to see Tony looking at her like she was something precious he’d lost and found again. She didn’t see Steve leave.

“You’ve said it twice now. It _rolls_ off your tongue.” Tony pointed out in his insufferable genius voice. “You’d make a very bad lawyer. You keep disproving your case.”

“We’re not in court,” Evie said, tugging her hand away and backing up to stand behind the stool. “Even if we were, it’s possible to lose a case and still be telling the truth. But you have to listen to me, okay? Your hypothesis is wrong.” Tony’s stubbornness was going to make it really hard to change his mind, and she had to think fast. Would finding flaws in his thought process work? It was worth a try. “What even gave you this idea in the first place?” 

Tony snagged the stool with his foot and swept it out of the way. “Your refusal to use your real name,” he said, coming up right next to her and looking down at her with open affection. “Along with refusing to use mine. Made me wonder about the reasons.”

“I’m not that person anymore, and I’ve never heard you use that name. Not to me, not about me,” she told him. The way he was looking at her was everything she ever wanted, and it was killing her.

“Not married, then, got it. That’s good, because it means I don’t have to top myself when it comes to proposing.”

Only Tony could make trying to literally outdo himself romantic. “Tony!” she groaned in frustration, her face flaming with a blush she didn’t think would ever fade.

His face lit up like she’d come up with a foolproof plan for world peace. “Three. Boy, that does _not_ get old,” he said, reaching out to tuck a lock of hair behind her ear.

“Look at me,” Evie commanded, even though he already was. “Listen: you _have_ to keep this between us. When you realize how wrong you are, it’s not going to be pretty, and I don’t want to fuck up the team dynamic. And, as much as I hate to say it, you’re going to have to keep your hands to yourself.”

Tony got that mutinous look on his face that told her he would do what he knew best, no matter what she said. He backed away, dropping his hands, but leaned over as if to tell her a secret. “You said the ‘I hate to say this’ part out loud, did you know that?”

She did not, in fact, realize that.

“More reasons,” he said, walking backwards to pick up stray dishes to put them in the kitchen as he spoke. “You don’t lie, except to me. It’s like you feel like you _have_ to, for some reason.”

Evie didn’t know how to take that. A quick reflection through what he could be talking about told her that if she _was_ his wife as Tony seemed so certain she was, then she would have to be lying about some things. The problem with refuting that was that she _had_ lied or obfuscated multiple times. Confronting that would bring them full circle back to the reason he was wrong-- the thing she didn’t want to tell him. The thing that would turn his theory to ashes, along with their friendship.

“Another thing,” Tony said, pointing at her with an empty glass. “You have a pathological need for me to know you don’t want to hurt me. Not even my close friends are like that.” He laughed, and it sounded just a little bitter. “Tough love is a way of life around here, sometimes.”

Evie frowned. His tone was flippant, but the sentiment was pretty unhappy. 

“See? Right there. The look on your face.”

“Compassion for a teammate is hardly evidence of a prior romantic relationship! Argh!” Evie covered her face in her hands in deep frustration. How was she somehow in a position to persuade this man that she _didn’t_ delight in the idea of a long-term committed relationship with him! How was this her life?

When she dropped her hands, Tony was there. Immediately, framed her face with his hands and kissed her. His lips were gentle and exploratory, and he brushed his nose against hers in an intimate caress that felt truly caring. Evie tried as hard as she could not to slide her arms around him and breathe him in; the best she could do was rest her palms against his chest and hope he didn’t hate her when he finally did hear the truth.

When the kiss was over, he pulled her into a hug, and she gave in to her desire to reciprocate.

“I _need_ this. Is that what you want to hear?” he whispered. In response, she kissed his chest and didn’t pull back, though she knew she should. “I made you heal me. I watched the footage, all of it. It was ripping you up, and you never said anything.”

“Tony,” she whispered. “You have to believe me, and I have to stop letting you this close.”

His gentle hug tightened. “Okay I’ll make you a deal,” he said, resting his chin on the top of her head. “I don’t have to go from zero to a hundred. What about zero to fifty?”

Evie pulled her head back to look up at him, her eyebrows furrowed. He was clearly still not listening.

“Zero to twent-- thirty-five?” Tony amended, looking at her intently as if to gauge where to set the number based on her facial expressions. “Anything but zero, is what I’m saying. I like to get my way, you know that.” He traced her features with his eyes, clearly liking what he saw. It was heady. “Whatever you decide, we’re not going back to ‘Stark.’ I’ll change my name to Tony Tony if I have to, you know I would.”

Evie’s jaw dropped. “You would! I’m actually grateful you didn’t think of that before, or you would have dropped the name change papers in my lap with a look of supreme triumph.”

Tony started laughing. “You _get_ me.” He spun her around and out of his arms with a dance move, and something told her that he’d done it because he didn’t want to watch her pull away again. That thought sprouted roots with his name on them in multiple locations in her heart, as if knowing she could only tug one out at a time. “So you agree-- you don’t have to admit I’m right but you won’t shut me out,” he stated, letting go of her hand. Suddenly stern, he said, “What’s my name?”

Her lips twitched with the desire to pick some sort of truly ridiculous title, but she didn’t. “Tony.”

“Good. That’s 5%. What can I add? Backrub rights? No. Scratch that. I want kisses. You would not believe how long I’ve harbored this theory, picturing my other self kissing you in your universe--” 

“All right, hold on. You have got to, to--” she searched for the right analogy, struggling to explain it in a way he’d finally comprehend. “Stop designing without owning the patent. Stop building a foundation on a plot of land you don’t own!”

“Sell it to me.”

“You’re not listening, I’m going to bed.”

“Wait, Evie--” Tony snagged her hand to stop her, and she stopped short, holding herself rigid, obviously resisting. She had her back to him.

“It’s all too much at once, you know that, right?” Evie said, simply, looking over her shoulder.

Tony shut his eyes and nodded. With his eyes still closed, he said, “You ever find a band you’d never heard before, it’s like a revelation? All of a sudden, their entire discography is there for the taking. You binge it so you don’t have to go another _sunrise_ without knowing every beat, every note by heart.” He opened his eyes and opened his hand, releasing her. “When I realized I was right about this, I wanted to catch up.” Tony smiled and looked down. “You can’t drag the needle across the record. The music doesn’t play right.”

She nodded. “Good night, Tony.”

He stood and watched her until she was almost to the hallway door, and then, he called out to her.

“One more thing.”

Evie reached for the doorknob but looked over to see that Tony was facing her, arms at his sides, legs slightly apart. He almost looked like he was wearing the Iron Man armor.

“You should know, if I didn’t like you in _this_ universe? Then I wouldn’t care who you were to me in that one.” Tony let the words float across the space between them before he added, “Good night, Hyacinth.”

8888888888

Things weren’t that much more explicable in the morning, but there was at least one answer to a question she hadn’t even thought to ask.

> _=If you have a moment, I wanted to pass along a message about your privacy.=_

Evie set down her yogurt spoon and said, “All right, then.”

> _=Mr. Stark wanted to make clear that you should feel safe in your apartment as well as during our conversations. As such, he has set up a security protocol which will encrypt the conversations between the two of us, as well as any and all recordings, incidental or otherwise, which feature you. As you may or may not know, since Thor’s brother Loki attacked Earth, all areas in the tower are recorded, with varying degrees of encryption and access. Because of his position as the owner of the building, Mr. Stark has access to these, though all views are, of course, logged. However, because of the nature of your relationship, from this point forward, all recordings will be inaccessible to him unless he provides a password of your creation. Is this situation agreeable to you?=_

“Uh, yes. I mean, yes. Yes. A lot to process, J.” Evie said, stammering out of sheer surprise.

> _=What password would you like to use? A secondary protocol has also been enacted whereby I inform you of any and all access attempts by Mr. Stark.=_

“Mmm, that’s wise. Was that your idea or his?” Evie said, sneaking another spoonful of yogurt.

> _=Mine.=_

“‘Kay. I’m thinking of a password, give me, like, five minutes to finish this first though, all right?”

> _=Certainly, Miss Adams.=_

A password. Evie thought about what to pick. She wanted it to be something from her universe and therefore something that no one could possibly guess. All of a sudden she realized what she could use-- the name from a movie that RDJ had starred in, one of her favorites, actually. She’d looked it up. ‘Only You’ had been filmed in this universe, but with an unlikely John Cusack as the lead. 

Instead of picking the name of _that_ character, though, Evie decided to use the red herring name of the female lead’s ‘destiny.’ The premise of the film was mistaken identity, though it was purposeful-- RDJ’s character had claimed to be a person the female lead thought she was destined to be with. She’d caught him and he spent the rest of the film proving to her that he was meant to be with her, despite not having the ‘right’ name.

Thinking that all through had Evie blushing at the practical applications for her situation, but it was still a memorable, almost indecipherable password, so she shoved her thoughts away and spoke.

“I’ve got the password for you, JARVIS. ‘Damon Bradley.’”

> _=I have recorded that information in a place only I can access.=_

“Thanks. Can I ask a personal question, JARVIS?”

> _=I cannot imagine a situation where I would be able to stop you.=_

“Hah,” she said. “That’s a bit more like your usual self, but you’ve been awfully subdued with me. Is Tony’s hypothesis about a pre-existing relationship between us a part of that?”

> = _It has been an interesting experience to be in a position to keep a secret so important to my creator. Though, the more I observe his attachment to you, the more my calculations devalue that secret as significant. Naturally, that means nothing to my responsibility to continue to keep it, so please do not concern yourself with that possibility.=_

Evie coughed. “Holy shit, JARVIS, I’m really glad you waited until we had a password to lay that on me. And oh boy do I disagree with you.”

> _=That is, of course, your prerogative, Miss Adams.=_

She’d only just washed her yogurt spoon when she got a phone call from Bruce.

_“Hey, Evie. Sorry to call so early, but I was trying to decide if not hearing from you last night was a good or a bad thing.”_

“I thought once you were in there, it means we leave you alone until you say otherwise,” she told him.

_“That’s fair. I figured it would mean more if Steve punched him, anyway. Did Steve end up having to punch him?”_

Evie realized that Bruce didn’t know about Tony’s hypothesis about her, and she didn’t know if a video with Bruce and her together counted as a part of JARVIS’s new protocol. She _did_ know that if Tony found out there was a new recording under the same designation, with herself and Bruce as participants, it would drive him crazy, and she didn’t intend to hold that conversation unencrypted.

_“Evie?”_

“I’m just sitting here trying to figure out how to explain to you the reason why Tony was acting so strangely,” she said, her chest bubbling up with nervous laughter.

_“The man isn’t known for his patience, you know. I’m pretty sure he’s been hung up on you for a few months now, and he does love a spectacle.”_

In the heady, emotional _mess_ that had been the night before, she’d completely forgotten that initially, Tony had pushed for her to sit for the questions in front of the whole group, not just Steve and Bruce. Her face flamed again at the thought of _everyone_ subscribing to Tony’s theory of her previous life.

“He… and believe me, I’m a mess right now trying to figure out how to fix this, but-- he thinks I had to have been romantically involved with the Tony in my universe,” she told Bruce.

His initial silence spoke volumes.

 _“I have to admit I didn’t see that one coming.”_ There was a pause, and then Bruce said, _“What did you tell him?”_

Bruce had a certain timbre to his voice when he was being righteously indignant. It wasn’t as pronounced as Steve’s (whose was?), but she knew Bruce pretty well, and she could recognize it.

“Want to go for a walk to get some tea with me, and I can tell you?”

_“You’re on.”_

Evie grabbed the things she’d need and headed out to the common area to wait for Bruce. Thor, Jane, and Darcy were already there, talking about the merits of various flavors of pop tarts. She was about to join in with her own favorite when the residence door slammed open. It was Clint, followed by a sober-looking Bruce. Clint was in the middle of speaking to JARVIS in a tone that made her heart clench in her chest.

“Turn on the news,” Clint said, speed walking toward the television screen that was lifting from its base like the one in her apartment.

As soon as the screen was fully in place, Evie could see why he was concerned. The chyron at the bottom of the screen read ‘Iron Man harmed in explosion, exclusive footage reveals.’

“This is from South America,” Natasha said.

“Woah, where did you come from?” Darcy asked. Nat just smiled mysteriously. 

The video on the screen was post-explosion. There was a lot of smoke in the recognizable ‘forest’s edge’ setting, and then the camera shifted, showing a knot of people carrying the Iron Man suit.

Evie heard running feet behind her and turned, partly because she didn’t want to see Tony’s injuries from that vantage point, and partly because she wanted to see who it was.

It was Tony. “That’s not from any of our cameras,” he said, jogging up to lean up against the side of the chair she was sitting in. “It’s gotta be a drone.”

“About to repeat, I’ve seen it twice now,” Clint told them.

Tony’s hand landed on her shoulder, firm and comforting, but in the action Evie also felt a warning. She didn’t look up at him, but seconds later, she wished she had, because she wouldn’t have seen what was on the screen.

The explosion wasn’t centered, which told her that the operator had been forewarned, but not precisely so. That wasn’t too comforting, though, because right at the edge of the frame, the Iron Man suit came hurtling down. Evie knew where his wounds would be, so she was able to spot that he was already injured during the fall. At the last possible second, the repulsors fired, but one arm’s worth wasn’t enough to stop him from crash landing.

“You landed on your head!” Evie gasped. Knowing he was fine now and that she’d been the one who had made sure of that wasn’t all that comforting in the light of what she’d just seen.

“Exact wrong angle, yeah,” Tony said almost absently, his attention entirely focused on the screen.

_“Stark is scheduled to attend the AOPAA gala in two days, but sources have been muted about whether he’ll be in peak physical shape for the black-tie event. This certainly explains his absence from many of his typical haunts in the past weeks, and we wish him well on his road to recovery. Susan?”_

“Turn it off. JARVIS will have the footage by now, we don’t need their pithy commentary,” Tony said derisively. He looked down at her. “Are you okay?”

“I… don’t know,” she said, the image of Tony’s Iron Man suit dented and ragged around his injuries prominent in her mind. “I kind of blocked out how bad-- Clint, does the footage show the glow from the Quinjet? Does the general public, or the press, really, know about the medical facility in the tower? Are there questions about how he’s gone from, from _that_ to--”

“Hey,” Tony said. He crouched next to the chair. “Look at me. I’m fine, thanks to you. That’s what matters. This--” he made a dismissive noise. “We’ll figure it out.”

“Did you repair that suit? Or is it--”

“It’s trashed. I’ve got it somewhere. Do you need to see it? Because I’m not sure that’s the best idea.”

“Definitely not a good idea,” Nat said.

Tony nodded, clearly trying to dissuade her. “We’ve been studying that substance that ate through the metal. I mean, the whole thing’s still grimy from all the dirt and blood, you’d really--” He cocked his head to the side. “Your face just went completely white.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re not the most comforting person in the world?” she whispered. 

8888888888

The explosion was leading the news by that evening. During the meeting Steve and Tony called after dinner, the discussion was mostly about _why_ the footage was released, not what it showed. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much to conclude other than there was an unknown, nefarious purpose, and they should be on their guard.

What Evie hadn’t been expecting was that her agreement to accompany Tony to the gala would become team knowledge. She could see that each of them had to go through and shuffle around some of their assumptions-- and she also saw how much Tony enjoyed the new ones.

It was decided that she and Tony should bring their comms for the event. It was also suggested that Tony wear the ARC reactor and bring some of his smaller suit components. It was framed as a precaution, but something told Evie that he was already planning to do so.

Nat stayed back to talk to her about how deep they wanted to go with the disguise, and to both women’s irritation, Tony sat at the far end of the table during the whole discussion. To Natasha’s credit, though, she didn’t tailor any of what she said to their silent audience. Unfortunately, at the end of their conversation, Evie still didn’t know what she wanted to pick, and she had less than forty-eight hours to choose.

That didn’t include figuring out how to get a dress.

“I’m sure that whole conversation was _fascinating_ for you,” Evie said to Tony after Nat had left.

“The dawning horror on your face was… instructive,” he told her.

“About that,” Evie said, biting her lip.

“There’s going to be a ton of press at this thing because of the video.”

She nodded.

“Lots of scrutiny, not just on me, but whoever I bring with me.”

Evie nodded again.

“You’re trying to figure out a way to tell me you can’t come.”

“Actually, I was going to ask you if you had a hair color preference,” she said, watching his face. 

Tony froze in place, his brows furrowing. He rather ostentatiously looked behind him to see if someone else was standing there, moving through confusion directly to overplaying his relief. 

It was enough for her to add, “I mean, if you don’t _want_ to, it’s fine, I just really don’t care that much--”

He opened his mouth to answer something affirmatively, then seemed to change his mind. “No. You know what? I don’t want you to think I want to be there with someone else. Pick whatever.”

“Oh. Okay,” she said, touched.

Tony stood up and pulled something out of his pocket. It was small and rectangular, and he tapped it against his palm as he stood there finishing up with whatever he was doing on his phone.

“Just let me know what you go with, so I have some time to get used to it,” he said, starting for the door. 

She knew him well enough to guess that the thing in his hand was something for her, and he was going to try to drop it on her like an afterthought. Impulsively, she gathered up her own phone and walked quietly behind him. Evie stopped when he did and held out her hand expectantly.

Tony started speaking before he turned around. “So, I know you’re going to push back on this, especially because, I’ll be honest, a dress for a gala like this is going to be expensive. But I put some money on a card so you can--” He stopped when he saw her hand. “You’re… fine with it.” He sounded like he’d swallowed a frog, shaking his head in sarcastic disbelief.

“It’s not like you’re paying me off for services rendered,” Evie said sweetly. “Unless my rate for a few kisses is _really_ high.”

Tony started coughing. He recovered quickly, though.

“We could always flood the market.” His gaze was warm and insolent.

Evie’s face flamed, and Tony doubled down.

“You’re picturing it,” he said, smugly.

“I’m sorry, but my heart has signed a non-disclosure agreement with my head, and that’s _extensively_ covered,” she managed to say, heading for the door. “I don’t have much time while the shops are open.”

“If you need me to pull some strings, let me know,” Tony said. “Just ask JARVIS.”

“Will do.” 


	10. The Golden Hour

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Evie picks out a dress for the gala. They have a lovely time, until something happens that leads her to have to choose whether to reveal her healing abilities in public.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's my birthday, so you get a chapter today! 
> 
> Here's a link to Evie's dress, but if you want a picture without clicking on a shopping site, check out the end note. https://www.bergdorfgoodman.com/p/monique-lhuillier-embroidered-strapless-column-gown-prod156310063?childItemId=BGB5LQF_&uuid=PDP_PAGINATION_c9186d98e5ed4077e19c485c97612195_AxsioG62xK7d0g-XO2dkhAHDoIv_P-K7MSuve7_m.jsession&page=0&position=40&navpath=cat000000_cat000002_cat441206_cat80001_cat285305

### Chapter Ten: The Golden Hour

Darcy Lewis was, in her own way, both as fun to be around and infuriating as Tony was. She had a similar sarcastic, irreverent outlook on life, which served the two of them well in the boutiques they needed to shop in to find the right kind of dress for a black tie event. As much as Evie had been irritated by Darcy’s insistence to dress her up before they went out, it had probably made a difference in the shops, too.

“You’re quiet. Is that a good quiet?” Darcy asked her from outside the changing room. Evie was silently admiring the dress she’d just put on, a black strapless dress overlaid with blue lace. She loved everything about it except the strapless part. With a chest like hers, Evie had always felt like she was sporting her own zip code when she wore anything that left her neck and shoulders bare.

“It’s good quiet, but I’m going to need about ten gallons of self-confidence and a cover-up of some sort,” Evie called out.

From just outside the changing room curtain, Darcy said, “You’re decent?”

“Yeah, just staring at this and wishing I could let myself buy it.” The curtain slid to the side to admit Darcy, who immediately reacted positively to what she saw. After stepping inside, Darcy started to slide the curtain back, and Evie stopped her. “Let me. If I can’t lift my arm up like that without an obscenity charge, that’ll be a deciding factor.”

“Okay, but there’s a very specific tape for that, so please trust me when I tell you this is the dress.”

It didn’t actually slide down as much as Evie would have expected. That was probably the difference between something well made and something she could have afforded as her previous self. Not that she could afford this either, but Tony could, and it was really, really pretty. She looked pretty _in_ it.

“So, hear me out here, but: you should already have access to those buckets of self-confidence with an invitation to this thing from Stark,” Darcy said.

 _If only Darcy knew,_ Evie thought, remembering the way Tony had kissed her. Then the reality of how much she _didn’t_ know hit, and Evie was back in her own head again.

“Stay here, I saw a scarf thing.”

Evie spent the time waiting for Darcy’s return looking at the back of the dress. It dipped less at the back than the other strapless gown they’d looked at, the one she hadn’t liked at all. The more she looked at the textured blue lace overlay of this one, the more she loved how much effort had clearly gone into the patterning of it. Not only did it terminate in attractive ways at the hem and bodice, it had tighter or looser patterning at strategic areas, accentuating her hips and bust.

“Here, I had to wrestle this off of the harridan at the accessories counter,” Darcy said, thrusting an armful of filmy blue and black fabric at her.

“This is a lot, Darcy,” Evie said.

“Trust the expert.”

The scarf fabric was so thin that it seemed like it would float with very little provocation. It was long, but its filminess made it easy to fold it in half and drape it over her exposed shoulders. One end of the fabric was slightly lighter blue than the lace, transitioning in a long gradient to the black of the base dress. They had obviously been made to go together, perhaps as a part of a collection. Folding the scarf obscured the transition, but she and Darcy experimented with various drapes until Evie completely forgot she was even wearing a strapless dress.

“Fine, I’ll buy it,” she said after staring at herself in the mirror for two solid minutes picturing what Tony’s face would look like when he saw her wearing it.

“Damn straight you will.”

8888888888

She ended up choosing a brown wig and blue contacts that happened to match the blue of her dress exactly, because there was no point in wearing them if she couldn’t exploit the ability to color-coordinate. The wig Natasha ended up lending to her was styled into a simple up-do held in place by a sapphire and silver clip. There were matching earrings, but Nat was close-lipped about where the necklace had gone. She promised to see what she could do about a substitute, but Evie spent the last few hours before the gala looking online and calling around, looking for the exact right piece.

> _=Mr. Stark is at your door, Miss Adams. Would you like me to let him in?=_

_“My_ door?” Evie asked. She was wearing the strapless bra she’d gotten for the dress, along with their matching lacy underpants and a half slip that was gorgeous in its own right. Casting around for something to wear to cover herself up, she grabbed her bathrobe, which was on the short side.

> _=Might I remind you that you are under no obligation to let him in?=_

“You can definitely do that, JARVIS, if it makes you happy,” Evie told him. In a fit of inspiration, she grabbed the flat sheet from her bed and wrapped it around her waist, retying her silver fluffy bathrobe overtop of it, and hanging the excess over one arm. “But I told him I’d show him the wig beforehand, and then I got caught up in the necklace thing, and there’s less than an hour before-- yes, let him in, I think I’m ready.”

> _=If that’s your assessment, I am not in a position to argue, Miss Adams.=_

“I can’t believe I used to miss when you were snarky,” she told him, walking out into the living room. There was a mirror hanging in the short hallway leading to her bedroom, and a quick check as she walked past told her that Nat’s makeup and wig work were still impeccable, despite Evie flailing around with the bathrobe and sheet.

Tony walked in, and the sight of him in his expertly tailored tuxedo sucked all breath from her lungs. That was the only explanation for the way her chest burned and she couldn’t speak. Evie looked down to try to collect herself, and that’s when she saw the pattern on her sheets.

“I _knew_ you were sleeping with Bruce!” Tony said, clutching his chest as if mortally wounded.

Evie started laughing helplessly. “I completely forgot I had Hulk sheets!” she protested between giggles. “God, Nat will flay me alive if I laugh so hard I undo all of her work. Hold on,” she told Tony, grabbing a tissue to stop the tears from leaking out and ruining her makeup.

“That dress must have cost you a _fortune,”_ Tony quipped. “How did you cover the excess from the card?”

“I would probably pay good money to see Bruce’s expression if we showed him a picture of me wearing a Hulk sheet toga and claimed it was for the gala,” Evie said, leaning up against the wall. “But here: brown haired Evie.”

Tony leaned down to scoop up the trailing edge of the sheet and hand it to her. “Blue-eyed, too,” he said. “Different blue than that day in the lab, though.”

“It is! You remember that?” she asked. 

Her lungs felt obstructed again, but the warm desire shooting tendrils of anticipation out through every vein was exciting and becoming familiar. Tony nodded, reaching out to smooth the lapel of her bathrobe with the pads of his fingers. 

“It’s the same blue as the lace on my dress,” Evie said, trying to focus on something other than wanting him to touch her.

“Is the whole dress made of lace? ‘Cause that might mean they’ll see your Hulk sheets underneath, and that would be crossing a line.” His eyes darkened a shade. “Do you need help putting it on?”

“Speaking of line crossing,” Evie murmured, turning and backing up away from him toward the bedroom. “I tried it on earlier, I can do the zipper and everything. If you want to wait under guard by JARVIS, I can go get dressed. I’m a little behind because I was trying to find the perfect necklace.”

Tony looked disappointed, but he nodded, sticking one hand into his pocket, causing his tuxedo jacket to ruck up around his wrist. He walked toward her loveseat, casually leaning against the back of it.

“Is this good?”

“I’m going to shut the door, so that mirror isn’t going to show you a thing,” Evie said.

His grin as he shrugged was heart-stoppingly handsome. “Worth a shot.” Tony looked up and addressed his AI. “All right JARVIS, you’re authorized to tell on me if I move.”

> _=Acknowledged. Shall I deactivate that mode once Miss Adams returns to the living room?=_

“Please,” Tony said. He turned his back on her, seemingly looking out the window.

Evie reached down and pulled up the excess Hulk sheet up so she could walk, but she couldn’t let herself leave him in her living room without at least acknowledging the tuxedo. 

“Tony?”

He spun on his heel immediately, a self-satisfied smile haunting his serious expression.

“You look completely _amazing._ I’ll be right out.” She didn’t let herself watch his reaction.

8888888888

Ten minutes later she’d donned the dress, touched up her makeup, grabbed her black velvet clutch, put on her earrings, and slipped on her shoes. Evie walked out into the living room and saw Tony in the same position he was before, though now, he had his fist closed around some kind of a necklace whose silver chain dangled in a loop around his wrist.

> _=Protocol disengaged.=_

She’d wanted to stand there and gaze at him a bit longer, but Tony turned at JARVIS’s prompting. The admiration in his eyes made her warm all over.

“Nat dropped by,” he said, holding up the necklace. “JARVIS didn’t say anything because I just let her in and out.” He shook his head. “You look great. Stunning.”

Evie blushed. Those three seconds would live rent-free in her head for the rest of her life, she was sure. She was amassing quite a collection. Evie walked over and he laid the pendant in her palm. It was a large sapphire which sat in the middle of filigree wings that stretched out in twists from the gemstone. 

“May I?” he asked, undoing the clasp and suspending the necklace between his hands. Evie nodded. Tony fastened the necklace around her neck. The warmth from his hand meant it wasn’t cold against her chest.“Do you want to be introduced as Evangeline or Evie, at the door?” Tony asked, still standing directly behind her.

“There’s a bit of a distance to the name ‘Evangeline,’ so I think using the full name is probably a good idea,” she said.

“Good point. I don’t think I’ve ever called you that. In fact, I distinctly remember that you _wouldn’t let me,_ ” he pointed out, kissing the place where her shoulder joined her neck. 

Evie let out a little moaning sigh, an expression of both the pleasure of feeling his lips on her and the frustration of how fraught her situation was. Tony was clearly startled, because he grabbed her upper arms on either side as if to steady himself. The kiss had been lovely, but his hands _scorched_ her, both in actual temperature and from the heat between them.

“Wasn’t expecting that,” Tony said, his voice shaky. She tensed up, embarrassed, and he reacted immediately even without being able to see her expression. “Don’t. It was good. But, we should go.”

He released her, and Evie grabbed her coverup, arranging it over her shoulders the way Darcy had shown her. Both she and Tony were quiet in the elevator. When they stepped out, it was into the garage, and no one was waiting for them.

Tony walked backwards toward the line of sportscars, digging in his pocket for a key. “I figured you’d be okay with me driving, considering I wasn’t sure I’d keep my hands to myself otherwise.”

“Desperate to go from zero to a hundred, aren’t you?” she quipped. She was proud at the way he nodded his begrudging appreciation. “There’s a metaphor there.”

“Oh?” he said as they settled into a car as jet-black as his tux.

“Something about accelerating toward the brick wall of truth?”

“You seem way more scared of it than I am. Which one of us is driving the other to distraction in this analogy?” Tony asked, expertly backing out of the garage.

Evie responded without hesitation. “You, definitely.”

Tony almost missed a stop sign looking over at her.

“Pay attention!” she ordered, grabbing onto the seat in sudden fear.

“My fault.” They stopped at a red light, and he looked over at her again. “Really.” It came out like a statement, and Tony looked smugly pleased, like all of his plans had come into fruition.

Evie leaned her head on her headrest as if completely overcome and nodded at him. 

“Good.” Tony broke into a genuine smile that hit her right as the light turned green. She wouldn’t put it past him to be able to power electronics with it. They were alone in the car, and he was preoccupied with driving more carefully now, so she gave herself permission to look at him, unselfconsciously.

“I could probably watch you operate machinery forever,” she said quietly.

“That can be arranged.”

Both of them were quiet for the rest of the short drive. When they got there, Tony drove up to the valet and walked around to help her out of the car.

“So, my version of a perfect event is one where you hang on my arm all night and dazzle the snobs with small talk, while I simultaneously see how much innuendo I can sneak into polite conversation,” Tony said, as they walked up to the brightly-lit doorway. “That’s cool, right?”

“Is that how you act with all your dates?” she asked, waiting until he was handing their invitation over to the man doing security.

“Mmhmm,” he said, raising the arm she wasn’t holding onto to wave at the cluster of press.

“Any other date behavior I should be aware of, here?” Evie asked, fully aware he was about to step up into the press area where photographs would be taken, and he couldn’t really respond. Tony’s press face was admirable, though. He posed with casual indifference, ignoring all of the shouted questions, until finally one of them asked about his date, and Tony stretched out his hand for her.

She felt as out of place as she ever had since she arrived in his universe, but Evie stepped up to stand next to him. Tony kissed her on the cheek and whispered, “Standard date protocol is: act completely, utterly in love with me. Lay it on thick.”

He stepped back and she tucked her arm into his, looking up at him with enchanted amusement.

“Yep, just like that,” he said, smiling. “Now, spin to show them the back of that dress.”

He helped her with the move, and when she was faced away, listening to the cameras clicking, Evie said, “And you, of course, have to act bored and indifferent to me, right? Or is it lecherous? I can’t remember.”

“Lecherous would be my pick,” Tony said, tucking an arm around her middle to help turn her back around in a way that would wow the photographers. He was standing close behind her, and Evie looked over to see him actually miming a shocked look as he checked her out. She reached out with one finger and lifted his head so that his gaze was level with her eyes instead of her chest, and then patted his cheek. Then, it was time for them to move on for the next couple.

“That was distinctly wifely of you,” Tony observed as they walked into the main room of the gala. Evie didn’t get a chance to respond, as they were deluged by other guests as soon as they caught sight of him.

8888888888

By the time she’d been at the event for an hour and a half, Evie had completely forgotten the name of the association that threw it, but it seemed like it was just an excuse for rich and/or talented people to gather. She recognized quite a few actors and singers, from movies to Broadway and popular music. The other guests seemed to be rich people she wouldn’t have otherwise recognized, and a few foreign dignitaries who were probably afforded an invitation by virtue of simply being in town at the time. It was ironic, but RDJ would probably have been invited to the thing, had it been held in her universe. 

Of course, in her universe, _she_ sure as hell wouldn’t have been there.

Tony didn’t leave her side much, but Evie thought that had a lot to do with her innate ability to steer conversations away from difficult and intrusive questions. While it wasn’t a dinner, there were tables where the guests could sit and chat in various groups. Tony ended up finding a guy he’d sponsored through a robotics project at Carnegie Mellon University. Evie sat at a table nearby and kept her eyes on Tony. She loved the way his face was animated with excitement about the young man’s ideas, hands flying from concept to concept.

“Just watching that man talk must be exhausting sometimes,” a gentleman already seated at the table said to her. His accent was clearly from the UK, and she got a tweedy British bachelor sense from him, despite his tuxedo.

“A little,” she admitted. “Mostly I’m just glad to live in a world that is improved by his being in it.”

“Martin Villiers,” the man said, raising his glass.

“Evangeline Adams,” she reciprocated. “Villiers, I recognize that from history.”

“Most do. Our family goes quite far back. My brother George is the current Earl.”

Evie’s eyes widened. “I can’t imagine having a reach that far. What a responsibility!”

“Yes, I’ve had to balance the expectations of family and other such things during my career, but I’ve done all right.”

Her phone buzzed, and she excused herself to check it, half expecting to see a message from Tony asking her to come rescue him.

 ** _J.A.R.V.I.S.:_** _Martin Villiers is an extremely well-known filmmaker. Multiple Oscars and BAFTA awards._

“I do hope that wasn’t bad news?” Villiers said politely.

“No, it’s my well-meaning date mocking me for being such a history buff I’ve missed your non-hereditary accomplishments. My sincere apologies, sir,” Evie said, knowing JARVIS wouldn’t mind that she’d fudged the truth a little. She hadn’t realized he would be monitoring her conversations, but then she remembered the video and the team’s concern about something happening.

“Oh, it was refreshing. Pay it no more thought. May I ask what you do for a living?”

“Hospital work, when I can,” she said, dodging the specifics. “My most rewarding job was with fellow healthcare workers suffering from extreme burnout, actually. It’s really easy to put too much of yourself into the job.”

“A healer. Admirable,” Villiers said, raising his glass again.

Tony appeared at her side, pointing with his thumb behind him. “They restocked the really tasty sandwich things.”

“Duty calls,” Evie told the filmmaker.

“Not just decorative, that one,” he told Tony. “Don’t make her have to regret you.”

“Yes sir,” Tony said, bowing his head a bit. “Excuse us?”

“Good evening to you both.”

As they walked away, Evie started explaining the embarrassment she’d felt by not recognizing Villiers. Tony instantly understood her issue, and she could see him filing that information away in his catalogue of differences between their universes.

A shout behind them startled her, and as soon as she turned around, Evie saw a black-clad man raising a gun and firing it-- right into the chest of Martin Villiers. Evie almost felt the strike of the bullet herself in the form of regret that she and Tony hadn’t remained by the man’s table. If they’d delayed even ninety seconds, it would have been just long enough for Tony to have sensed the danger and prevented the attack.

Beside her, Tony jammed his hands into his pockets after reaching down to flip some sort of hidden switch in each shoe.

“Go,” she told him, and he nodded, gesturing to his ear.

A crowd was gathering around Villiers, while a few tux-clad men were trying to detain the gunman. Evie dug in her clutch to get the comm as she rushed toward the fray. Behind her, she heard the tell-tale sounds of Tony’s suit. Shouts rose up, recognizing him, and Evie let that drive her sense of urgency. She ripped the scarf away from her arms where it had clung, draping it around her neck to hang behind her and out of the way. Above her, Tony soared in pursuit of the gunman.

“I’m a nurse,” Evie shouted, trying to get to Villiers. “Please, let me see him, I can help. I’m a nurse,” she repeated, ducking under a man’s arm. Evie tasted metal, and she wasn’t sure if it was dread at the idea of having to choose not to help or dread for the fallout once she did.

Heedless of her dress, Evie knelt beside the filmmaker, who had fallen from his chair into a nerveless slump. He had a thready pulse, but was unconscious. The wound was close to his heart, far more severe than anything she’d ever healed in the past. A man was trying to slap his cheeks to get him to wake up, and a woman in a deep red dress kept fanning him with her food plate.

Tony’s voice came over her comm, confident and stark.

_“Go on. I usually consider it an honor to ruin assassination plots.”_

“Help me move his clothes out of the way,” Evie ordered the people around her. Together, they ripped the shredded fabric wide enough so she could lay her hand on the wound. Now, all she had to worry about was someone deciding a woman in an evening gown with glowing hair was more of a harm than a help.

As soon as she touched Villiers she understood the difference between her practice sessions and this. They’d done deep stab wounds, but nothing this damaging. Her innate, almost magical understanding of the nature of this injury told her that the healing process would have to be slow and deliberate.

Evie felt the ripple of magic start circulating around her, but her focus was completely bent on the painstaking task of healing the parts of Villiers’ wound that was underneath the bullet. She was essentially lifting it out by healing beneath it. This was slower and more complicated than surging power into the injury and healing everything at once.

Evie bent over Villiers, resting both hands on the bloody mess on his chest. It wasn’t necessary for healing, but this was so power-intensive that she was starting to be pushed off-balance by the intensity of her resonant energy waves. Because of the time dilation and the intricacies of her task, she couldn’t really see how the other guests around her were reacting to what she was doing. She could feel that her wig and all of her pins had come off because her hair was loose, brushing against her cheeks.

The pressure on her chest that she’d felt after healing Tony started, but Evie could tell that she was winning, that Martin Villiers would survive this. His heart was whole again, all the bone woven back together, and all that remained was to heal-push the bullet the last fraction of an inch.

Finally, at the point where she felt almost hypoxic, Evie felt the bullet push up into her hands. She grabbed it, forcing herself into a last, desperate effort to heal up the surface of his skin.

Evie slumped to the floor beside Villiers, her chest heaving in her struggle to breathe. She was lifted up, and the cold metal and warm brown eyes of the man holding her told Evie she was safe.

“Wait,” she gasped out, as he started to fire his repulsors. “Police.” Evie held out the bullet.

“Later. I need to get you home,” Tony said, his voice echoing strangely thanks to the way she could hear him through the comm, too.

Too weak to argue, Evie closed her fist around the bullet and pulled it to her chest. He put his faceplate down, and then they were airborne. Her scarf rippled in the air currents behind them, tugging free and cartwheeling out into empty sky. Evie worried that the man she’d saved might just drift away while she wasn’t there to stop it, just like the scarf. She whispered his name and focused on the twisting swirl of fabric until it was out of sight. It was the last thing she saw before she let the darkness take her.

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The necklace Evie wears to the gala is made up of the angel wings part of the Caduceus symbol, which, after what happens when she's healing, basically makes the whole symbol, upside down.
> 
> Here's a direct link to a pic of the dress, if you're wary of shopping sites! https://imgur.com/a/FPP7aq3


	11. Sunset

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’re awake?” Tony asked, his voice right by her ear. “Hyacinth?” Evie was paralyzed with choices and emotions. This was a bedroom, but it wasn’t her bedroom. She looked down and saw that she was wearing an AC/DC t-shirt. “You’re upset,” Tony said, his voice gravelly from sleep.
> 
> “Yes. No. Maybe,” she said.
> 
> “Those are the available options, yes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning, there is sex in this chapter. Tied up in feels because that's how I do.

### Chapter Eleven: Sunset

Evie woke with a weight on her chest, similar to how she’d felt after healing Tony and Martin Villiers’ severe injuries. She cracked her eyes open just a little and saw the familiar blue-tinted glow of a hospital night light.

Lifting a hand to rub her face, she half-expected to feel an IV taped to it. The weight on her chest got lighter and then disappeared, and Evie went through a period of dissociation with her surroundings until she suddenly understood what was going on. She opened her eyes again, lifting a hand to rub her forehead.

It wasn’t a hospital bed. The weight on her chest had been an _arm,_ and the light she could see was from the ARC reactor Tony was wearing.

“You’re awake?” Tony asked, his voice right by her ear. “Hyacinth?” Evie was paralyzed with choices and emotions. This was a bedroom, but it wasn’t _her_ bedroom. She looked down and saw that she was wearing an AC/DC t-shirt. “You’re upset,” Tony said, his voice gravelly from sleep.

“Yes. No. Maybe,” she said.

“Those are the available options, yes.”

Evie felt him move and knew without looking over that he’d turned in the bed to face her. She struggled to organize her responses to the various different dilemmas at hand. The first was obvious.

“Villiers?”

“Fully recovered. They’re keeping him overnight, but he kicked up a fuss about not wanting to be a medical guinea pig. He’s scheduled to fly home later this morning.”

“The press?”

Tony sighed. “The footage is everywhere. You have to understand--” The mattress shifted as he leaned over to pick something up off of his nightstand. Then, with a voice that sounded legitimately vulnerable, he said, “Are you going to run out of here if I put a light on?”

“Why am I here in the first place?” she sighed, hating that she was the one responsible for both tearing up her heart _and_ taping it back together. Maybe not just hers, either.

“There’s a skeleton crew down there at night. You said that man’s name before you passed out. I was _not_ going to allow you to wonder about it in a room by yourself. Not after the good you did,” he said. He sounded like he was speaking through gritted teeth.

“What I _did_ was risk the team dynamic to change history, as if I have the right to,” she said, her eyes squeezed shut.

Tony’s hand searched down between them to find hers and gripped it, hard. Before, he’d touched her face, he’d kissed her, hugged her close, but this touch was more soul-baring than all of that. He was holding on as if he _had_ to. Evie leaned in, and he pulled her to him, up against his chest, his lips in her hair.

“You’re an Avenger. That’s what we do. We change history for the better. We fix things. And _none_ of us can do what you did. So don’t you dare regret it. A man is alive because of you, and you didn’t have to hurt a single person or blow anything up to do it.”

She caught her breath. That was as much about himself as it was about her. “Tony?”

“Don’t.”

“No. You put me in your bed and I’m going to talk to you like I belong here!” she flared. Evie laid her palm on the glow of his ARC reactor, bright through his thin white tank. She leaned her head back against the warm skin of his arm so she could see his face. “You think broken buildings and bodies are what matters about Iron Man? That’s ignoring all the infrastructure, everything behind the scenes!” He turned to face the ceiling, staring straight up. “You’ve heard the saying, ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day?’ That’s not just about _construction,_ Tony. That’s about the farmers who make the food to support the workers who built it. About the training the architects went through to design it! It’s about the beauty of the city itself, all the good it can do for its citizens. Implying your legacy of fighting evil is just destruction? That’s like saying your ARC reactor sprang fully formed from that cave in Afghanistan with no input from you.”

Tony looked at her, then. “Did you know me, before that?”

She could only fight so much at once. “No. I heard about you afterwards. Your press conference was something else, though! Was that a Whopper?” she asked, giving herself permission to deflect and confuse. Only after she said it did Evie realize he’d done exactly the same thing, deflecting away from her point. _I’ll allow it,_ she told herself. Some conclusions needed to percolate.

“I would have eaten five of them if I could,” he said. His tone turned more matter-of-fact than whimsical; “Look, I thought they’d demand I stand guard at the UN or something, after I told them it was me in the suit. They didn’t. This will be just like that-- all teeth, no bite.” He pulled away and reached up, flipping a switch on the wall. No light came on, but then Tony took his thin, transparent device from the nightstand and flicked his wrist.

The action suspended a display in the middle of the room, showing a video of the gala floor. The footage was focused on a group of people leaning back in surprise, a few holding up their arms as if to protect themselves from the person at the center of it all.

It was Evie. She was kneeling, bent over Villiers, but what was so compelling about the image was that her hair was glowing a bright, clear blue, whipping around her head with the power emanating from her. Arcing in wide loops above her were the twin lengths of the scarf caught around her neck. They were slowly spinning in a pattern that reminded her of the diagrams of DNA she’d seen in textbooks, and between them rose a dispersed column of light from her hair. 

By sheer chance, the blues from her hair and the scarf complimented each other. As she and Tony sat up to watch, the glow went out, and the figure slumped over. Instead of immediately falling, the scarf ends slowly fluttered to the ground around her, even as Tony flew in as Iron Man and scooped her up against his chest.

“Is that… what I look like, healing?” she whispered, completely stunned.

“Admittedly, it’s usually less dramatic than that. Takes a lot less time, too. This particular hue hints at really severe injuries,” Tony said, slipping out of bed and walking up to the image. 

His sweatpants were slung low on his hips, and there was something really intimate about being able to see his bare feet. He slotted his hand into a particular space underneath the video and turned his wrist, rewinding it a little. 

“It’s really good quality, for a cell phone capture.” He grinned at her and pulled his hand back out, making another gesture to toss the whole display away into nothingness. “We make good products.”

“Of _course_ it’s your phone,” she laughed. “There’s really nothing you can’t do.”

He held up a finger and shook his head. “Still working on a few things. But, I’m seeing progress.” Tony sat back down on the bed beside her, stretching his legs out in front of him. “Fury already had someone on contingency coming up with a play if the press found out about you. Let the leaders of the world make their demands,” Tony said, looking down at her. His tone was emphatic. “They can’t have you.”

His eyes traced across her face, then down along the shirt that was so obviously his, all the way to where her legs were curled up under his blanket. By the time he’d reversed the track, the heat of wanting him had started to spread through her body.

“See? Progress,” he quipped. Evie shook her head, confused. Tony touched a finger to his lips and leaned over, and she remained uncomprehending until he whispered, “You didn’t say, ‘neither can you.’”

Then he dipped his head down and kissed her, open-mouthed and lush. For such an intense kiss, it was slow and deliberate. Evie held still and gave herself over to the sensations he was provoking. The angle was awkward, but Tony didn’t move closer, keeping his hands to himself. It was an expert lesson in the power of such a kiss, that he could set her on fire like that without touching her in any other way.

Evie’s neck started to ache, and she realized Tony was incrementally moving away from her. She finally understood what he was doing, and it was so sexy, so _Tony_ of him to challenge her to lean toward him if she wanted more.

She actually laughed, and Tony pulled back just a bit, his warm brown eyes pleased but curious. “What?”

“I know what you’re doing,” she said, trying to stay still. “You think you’re going to win?”

An insufferable smirk crossed his face. “I know I am,” he told her.

“You’re losing already,” Evie pointed out. “You backed up to say something.” With a long, ragged sigh, she ran a hand through her hair and sank back onto the pillow, dragging her fingertips along her neck and down, ending the movement by stroking the band logo displayed across her breasts.

 _“Fuck,”_ Tony swore, the word seemingly ripped from him, barely audible. “Seriously? That’s _totally_ cheating. You have to come back up to where you were.”

“I don’t recall that being a rule.”

“It’s a rule now. You can’t just triple the distance.” To her surprise, Tony reached over and used his hand and forearm to lift her upper body to nearly the _exact_ place she was before. The action didn’t cause his arm to shake with the effort of lifting her whatsoever. “Right there,” he added, slowly pulling his arm away. Evie held steady where he’d put her by holding herself up with one hand, but she couldn’t help staring at the muscles of his arms when he was finished. She’d known he was strong, but _damn._

“Well played,” she said. She was breathing more heavily after that move than he was, Evie realized. Despite herself, she started grinning, a result of being both very turned on and incredibly impressed. Evie covered her face with her hand.

“I’m going to start taking it personally if you keep laughing at me like this.” He was teasing, but she recognized the truth there. 

“Oh, no! I promise, I’m not laughing at you. This whole situation is honestly just ridiculously hot, how are you even real?”

If she’d thought Tony was overwhelming before, that was before he smiled down at her at hearing that. It was a _genuine_ smile, with none of the edge of snark, vulnerability, or other baggage he carried with him. _Would it be wrong to think that maybe I could have this?_ she thought to herself. In that moment, Evie threw all her inhibitions away. She was going to win, however it ended.

“You’re not quite where you were, either,” she said, sliding her fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck, turning her hand so she could trail her fingernails across the path they’d already traveled. His eyes drifted closed, and she saw something out of the corner of her eye.

Tony had a fist full of the blanket, his knuckles white with the effort not to move.

“Just a little lower,” she whispered. Tony allowed her to lead him until they were mere breaths away. “There,” she murmured, sliding her hand out of his hair and down, allowing herself to feel the strength of his biceps.

Tony’s eyes popped open. They were dark with desire, and she blushed just seeing how clearly the want was written across his face.

“God, do I look like that?” she asked.

“Like what?”

“About to combust.”

One edge of his mouth turned up and Tony’s expression turned predatory. He nodded.

“Now what?” Evie wondered aloud. “Wait till one of us moves? Aren’t we both too stubborn for that?”

“Unstoppable force meets the immovable object?” he said, his gaze fixed on her lips. “I have a suggestion.”

Tony seemed like he was actually getting closer, and she _wanted that._ “Yes?”

“A judicious retreat. People respect a decisive leader, but not one that clings to a losing position. Give in.”

He was definitely moving incrementally nearer. She yearned to close the distance, but his words were weighted. The only thing that would be worse than being rejected, Evie realized, would be to have been rejected _after_ she got to have this. That’s why she followed Tony’s example and grabbed a handful of the blanket on the bed beside her and looked him right in the eyes.

“Which option are you asking for?” she said, feeling like she had a responsibility to signal her certainty that he’d reject her. 

Tony’s nose brushed her cheek, and his breath danced across her lips. “The one where you _trust_ me,” he whispered, hoarsely. _“Yield,_ Hyacinth. It’s easy, watch--”

\--and with that, his lips met hers, one hand tearing away the bunched-up blanket at her hips to drag her underneath him. Tony went from teasing to beguiling, putting all his sensual powers of persuasion to bear on her. 

Evie was on board, raising her bare leg and angling her foot across his backside, locking him in place. He ran the flat of his hand from her hip, across her chest, and along her arm, linking their fingers together and slamming them into the mattress.

She loved kissing, and it was obvious Tony did too. He was really good at it, dominant but not domineering, playful, not afraid to show her he was affected and enjoying himself. And if she’d thought his ability to wreck her without using his hands was heady enough, she was completely seduced by him now. Their combined hands were a proxy of the push and pull of their bodies; Evie rolled her hips in response to the drag of his lips and tongue, and he ground against her, pressing his hardness right where she wanted it.

Suddenly, Tony chuckled, deep and frustrated. He pulled free of her hand, tugging her leg from his hip to sit back. “My right leg is completely--” he groaned, his hands imprecise and desperately yanking at the blanket he was tangled up in. He stopped, resting his hands on his hips. He’d been looking up in sheer frustration, but now he locked eyes with her almost as if he were donning the Iron Man helmet. “Probably easier just to take all of this off.” Tony’s expression was honest, his question obvious.

In that decisive moment, Evie grabbed the hem of the AC/DC shirt she was wearing and pulled it off over her head in one smooth movement. The black strapless bra and matching panty set had been a brilliant idea, given the way he was looking at her.

“Well, _that’s_ a yes, yes?” Tony asked, the fingers in his left hand curling into a fist as if he were trying to stop himself from reaching out. “Ah!” he stopped her, as Evie took in a breath to answer. _“Some_ thinking, but not _all_ the thinking. I know you’ve got some… notions,” he moved his head as if dodging the thoughts coming at him, unable or unwilling to articulate her objections to his theory about the two of them. Tony struggled to his feet, showing her just how twisted the coverlet had become around his legs. His gaze was dark and obviously full of desire.

“Argh, I’d just rather you _forget_ me than hate me, when I turn out to be right,” she said, throwing her head back and burying her face in her elbow. He was silent for a full minute, after that.

Then, the bed dipped with Tony’s weight. “Do you want me?” he asked simply.

 _“God,_ yes.”

“Do you want to forget this?”

Evie dropped the arm covering her eyes and used it to push herself up. Tony was resting one knee on the bed, wearing just the white tank, his ARC reactor glowing at his chest. The look in his brown eyes was raw, open.

“No. Never.” Evie meant it. She surged to her knees, reaching for him.

“Me either.”

He met her in the middle of the bed, his large hands framing her face as he kissed her hungrily. Evie gave in to the need to touch him, dragging one hand across his back and holding onto his arm with the other. Tony guided her down, releasing her bra clasp in a move so deft she didn’t even realize until he was moving it away from her.

“Smooth,” she remarked, but he started doing something with his tongue to her nipple and she could barely finish the word.

“You were saying?” he grinned down at her, smug but not mocking. 

Evie just pulled his head back down to kiss him once before tugging at him, trying to pull him fully on top of her. Instead, Tony held his upper body suspended over her with both hands flat on the bed, seemingly waiting for something. She stroked along his arms, sliding one hand up to touch his face just briefly before arching up to kiss him. 

Tony pulled back after only a few seconds. His eyes seemed to be searching hers.

“What?” she asked, suddenly self-conscious.

“Perfect,” he whispered, leaning over to place his lips on her neck. He slid a hand down between them at the same time he shouldered his weight sideways beside her on the bed. The next minutes were frantic and full of sensation as he built her up to an intense, shuddering orgasm. Tony Stark, selfish, narcissistic, and impatient as he could be, lay next to her as she came down from it, his warm hand heavy on her stomach, the other tangled in her hair. He stayed still until she turned her head and nuzzled at his cheek.

“I feel sorry for every universe without you,” she whispered.

“That good, huh?” he said, quirking his brow.

Evie’s face flamed. Her whole _body_ was blushing.

“Look at me,” he commanded.

She shook her head.

Tony climbed on top of her, almost as close as possible, one hand lifting her chin. “Look at me,” he said, so close it was almost a kiss.

Evie opened her eyes, immediately locking eyes with Tony, and at that moment he thrust all the way home. He felt so good that it stole her breath. She saw the self-satisfied joy in his eyes that things had gone exactly as he’d planned, and then his lips were on hers. He’d already taken her apart once, and now Tony was putting her back together, with little slivers of himself embedded in each section, she realized. She’d never be free of him, not that she wanted to be.

Tony groaned, burying his face in her hair and speeding up. Evie clung to him as closely as she could, feeling the tingling surge rise again. It built and built, then hovered on a level of intense sweetness as Tony trailed open-mouthed kisses down her neck and back up to her ear.

“Come for me,” he murmured, his voice deep. Evie felt like her whole body clenched at the command, everywhere, and Tony obviously felt it, because he groaned. “Yes. Just like that. Come for me. Right--” and he caught his own breath, his hand sliding down to hook under her hip, altering her angle ever so slightly. “Right now,” he said, and she did, mostly because the pleasure in the command was so strong she couldn’t resist the pull of it. Tony was right there with her, and the sound he made as he let go gave her aftershocks.

Tony rolled onto his back, going completely limp, and she didn’t blame him. She felt drawn out in all the best ways, and all Evie could do was let her left hand fall onto his chest, palm up. She wouldn’t have minded if he didn’t cover it with his, wouldn’t have taken it to mean anything other than fully sated exhaustion, but he did. They lay like that, their breathing patterns slowly returning to normal, until the sunrise started scattering the barest of light through the windows, and Tony started speaking.

“After I got back from Afghanistan, I spent a lot of time with strangers. Doctors. Board members. Women.” He paused for what felt like a long time. “All of them were obsessed with the ARC reactor. Sometimes I wondered if any of the women cared whether they were having sex with _me,_ as long as they got some time to touch it, stare at it, ask me questions about it. I was incidental. A new normal.” He let out a heavy breath, and she brushed comfort across his hand with her thumb. Tony lifted their joined hands and kissed the back of hers. “It took sometimes five, six times before they’d look at my face first. I usually didn’t bother.”

Tony rolled over and met her eyes, his expression bare and honest. “You told me, months ago, that you hadn’t known about the surgery. Tonight, you didn’t even seem to notice it was there. You looked into my eyes, instead. You’re _used to it.”_

Evie realized what he was saying, and she didn’t know what to do. She tried to reach up to kiss him, but Tony leaned away, out of her reach. He looked upset and she couldn’t bear it. She scooted over to sit on the edge of the bed, faced away from him, and screwed her face up in a very particular kind of anguish.

"Stop punishing me for whatever I did in your universe,” he said flatly.

“I’m not.”

The bed shook with the force of something, probably his fist. “Like _hell_ you’re not. Life is full of coincidences, Hyacinth, but not at that level.”

“Tony--”

“What was it?” he interrupted, strident and angry. “Did the suit malfunction, hurt someone you cared about?”

“No!”

“Did we have kids? Did--”

“No, _God--”_

He didn’t stop for her denial. “--one of them die, did I fail you somehow? Did you figure out how to come here, to, to punish--”

“You’re _not real,_ Tony!” she shouted, standing up and yanking the sheet from the bed to cover herself in angry, jerky movements. “I’m not lying. You don’t exist. You’re a fictional character, in my universe. JARVIS?”

> _=I strongly urge you not to make any rash decisions, Miss Adams.=_

“No, fuck that. You unlock those videos, JARVIS. You do it right now.” Evie whirled around to face Tony, who had already gotten up from the bed and was finishing pulling on the sweatpants. He looked bewildered.

> _=Sir, do you wish me to follow Miss Adams’ instructions?=_

“No, JARVIS, don’t ask him, he’s already answered. He wants to know? He can know.”

“Evie.” Tony started toward her.

“RDJ is you. I’m a big fan. The in-joke about saying hi to RDJ? That’s in reference to the other you. The one who _plays_ Tony Stark in the movies.”

 _That_ stopped Tony in his tracks. “JARVIS?”

> _=She is telling the truth, Sir. She correctly guessed the name of the stage actor you commissioned for my voice, and spoke at length with Director Fury about the films the gentleman who portrays him in her universe starred in.=_

He was shaking his head, and Evie knew just what to say.

“You don’t think your life is a little cinematic? The dying man, what was his name? Yinsen? He was like a father figure to you in that cave. Then, right as you were trying to save him, he collapses on a sack of rice and dies after telling you not to waste your life. How would I know that, Tony, unless I’d seen it for myself? Have you ever told a single soul that it happened?”

It was getting through, she could see. Tony looked wild around the edges, and he kept shaking his head periodically as if pathologically unable to understand what she was telling him. Yet, there was an emotion in his eyes she hadn’t seen there since the first weeks of her time there: mistrust. It was horrible, but what was worse was the way he reacted when she leaned over to retrieve the shirt she’d woken up wearing. His shirt.

“Don’t,” Tony said, his voice sharp.

“Well, at least you believe me, now,” Evie said. Tony swallowed, hard. “I’ll get out.”

Evie managed not to cry as she turned her back on him, but it was a near thing. The sun’s light had spread enough for her to see his face throughout the fight, but what stuck in her mind most was the steadfast glow of his ARC reactor. It was real, in this universe, something Tony had actually built as a hostage in that cave in Afghanistan. He’d really gone through that, he’d really watched that man in the cave die for him, and everything that had come afterwards had shaped him into an actual hero. It wasn’t just a script, here. 

And she’d _hurt_ him, just like she’d always said she didn’t want to do.

It wasn’t something she could heal, either.

Not that he’d let her.

8888888888

No one saw Evie walking from the elevator to her apartment, her head held high, wrapped only in Tony Stark’s sheet. When she got there, she rushed straight to her closet. There, hanging in the back, was the garment bag Tony had kept sneaking in there since the first week she’d lived in the tower. Over the months, he’d added more things to it, almost a whole wardrobe, as a way to goad her.

She took it out and laid it on her bed, grabbing a few other things. Bruce’s shirt. The jacket Tony’s housekeeper had given her by accident. The everyday blonde wig she used to wear on her jogs, along with the three different color contacts she’d alternate between. The baseball cap Clint had given her.

Evie dressed in Bruce’s shirt and expertly prepped her hair to put the wig on. She then put the wig on and tucked it up into Clint’s baseball cap. Tony’s jacket, the contacts, and some other belongings were packed into the garment bag. Her comm and panic bracelet were probably still in Tony’s bedroom, Evie realized, but that was just as well. She wouldn’t have taken them with her.

Kneeling down beside her nightstand, Evie reached underneath the drawer and pulled out a packet that Director Fury had instructed her to hide somewhere in her apartment, should she ever need it. He’d told her it was something he gave to every agent and Avenger since the infiltration of SHIELD. It was a sequence of actions to perform in order to connect with his European network, including papers that would help get that person out of the country.

Evie’s had a picture of her as a blond-haired, brown-eyed socialite. It wouldn’t be hard to approximate that with Tony’s stupid over-priced clothing.

“JARVIS, I need you to include my exit from the tower in the special encryption under the agreed password. If possible, that should apply to all external surveillance you have access to, except anything that might break the law, of course.”

> _=I was hoping you would forget to do that, Miss Adams. Nevertheless, within reason, I will do as you ask. However, I strongly urge you to write a letter to Doctor Banner. The nature of your friendship is such that he will be… dangerously upset about your disappearance.=_

“Yeah, you’re right. Thanks, J.”

> _=I probably shouldn’t tell you that Mr. Stark is likely to lock down the tower within the next five minutes, as soon as he is finished watching the videos you directed me to release from encryption.=_

“Shit, okay,” Evie said.

She had to rush the note, but it couldn’t be helped.

_Bruce,_

_I did the thing I promised I wouldn’t do, and it didn’t just hurt him, it hurt me. I’ll be back, I just need to figure out how to heal myself first._

_Tell him I’m glad he’s not Mr. Wright._

_Everything I did was because of who he really is,_

_not who I watched on the big screen._

_I love you, don’t be angry,_

_Hyacinth_

Evie left the note on the island in the communal kitchen, and then she headed for the stairs, not trusting the elevators. She went out the side door into the alleyway beside the tower, watching in adrenaline-laced shock as the entryway door was almost immediately covered over by a metal sheath. The external light flickered between its normal white light and emergency, blinking red. From inside, Evie could hear an alarm klaxon.

She _ran._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Decided to start posting, with a much slower schedule than this, my Tony/OC Soulmate story set during the 5 years in Endgame. Tone is decidedly different from this one, more angsty, less plotty, but still romantic and funny in spots. Feel free to check it out, it's titled Exile All the Longer.
> 
> And thank you everyone for the reactions and comments and reading you've been doing! It's been purely delightful.


	12. Evening

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Evie makes it to London before the bad guys find her. Apparently, there just might be a patron saint of Avengers in caves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got impatient and decided to post the chapter a little early. It's a long'un. Though it's a tense sequence of events, it follows canon-typical scenes pretty well so readers don't have to worry about anything truly gnarly.

### Chapter Twelve: Evening

Her time spent jogging around the city to cover the various roads in her StarkPhone app really paid off, as she left the tower. Evie avoided the subway and taxis, and instead jogged as per usual to the hospital she spent time in, off and on. The moral dilemma of not being able to save anyone with her secret gift had been a bugbear Evie wrestled with in many ways over the months since she’d arrived in this universe. At first, she’d haunted a few ERs in the city, wishing there was a way she could save someone in true danger. She never had the opportunity, and after a while, she just spent time in the chapel at the nearest Children’s hospital to the tower.

She wasn’t particularly religious, but it had felt like the right kind of penance-- so near to the people she might be able to help, and yet the distance she would have had to travel to keep her gift a secret… it was an uncrossable chasm.

No doctor would have left her alone with a dying patient and halted actual, provable treatment (or stolen those last living moments with loved ones) to allow a strange silver-haired woman to lay her hands on their patient. It was more likely she’d have been locked away in the same kind of psychiatric ward she used to work with.

But, when Evie got to the building today, she saw something unexpected.

> _There might be a new member of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. They’re calling her ‘Helix,’ a blue-haired woman with the power to suck bullets right out of a man’s chest. The miraculous event happened at a gala for the Arts-- and if it weren’t for her presence there, the renowned filmmaker Martin Villiers would probably be eulogized by the world’s press today._

The narration was accompanied by the footage that Tony had shown her not long before. Evie stood at the doorway to the family waiting room and just stared.

“Hey, Cynthia. Can you believe it? Pretty hopeful, if you ask me. Someone like that, even if they could only spend a day a week-- hell, one day a _month,_ in a place like this…” the security guard shook her head.

“Yeah,” Evie said, her eyes filling with tears. She excused herself to run to the bathroom under the other woman’s understanding gaze. It took twenty minutes of deep breathing in a bathroom stall to calm down enough to put in the brown contacts. She tucked away Clint’s hat, and took stock of her plans.

She’d wanted to get to Fury, maybe see what she could do as an underground agent, but now? What if she could travel around the world, from hospital to hospital, just like the guard had said? 

Evie decided she would spend time in the chapel and waiting room, just like she had done at least twice a week for the past two months, except today, it would be the whole day. Surveillance featuring her would be locked down, but that wasn’t going to be useful for too long. She didn’t know whether Tony would want to find her at all, but Bruce would, and he was smart. Eventually he’d start looking for the _absence_ of available video and track her that way.

That wouldn’t happen for at least a day, though, she figured. And today, no one at Komansky would have a story about a strange woman who was trying to hide out. ‘Cynthia’ was clearly haunted by something, and she was always supportive and helpful to the other families who had to cycle through alongside her. Close-lipped, but supportive.

8888888888

Evie ended up sleeping in the chapel. It was a no-no, but she was well known there, and when they found her an hour before sunrise, she was brought to the security office instead of being arrested.

“They told me about you. I don’t think you’ve ever stayed here this long. You got an explanation?” the weary-eyed supervisor asked her.

“I finally accepted the loss, sir,” Evie told him. “It… I don’t know. Kind of felt that if I left the chapel, that was it. I won’t come back. Thanks for the comfort you guys provided.”

The man’s frown lines deepened, but he nodded and stretched out a hand. Evie shook it, nodded, and walked out with her garment bag slung over her shoulder.

Fury’s forged papers were _good._ She crammed her hair back up and swapped to blue contacts to use the ATM, just in case those were exempt from JARVIS’s reach. For Bruce’s sake, she wore his shirt. With the money, Evie bought a one-way ticket to London, the first location on Fury’s reconnection path.

On the plane, she was the only one without a phone to play with, but that was fine. Seeing the distinctive Stark logo on everyone’s devices was hard enough as it was. She didn’t want to carry one next to her heart in the tank top pocket she loved so much. Truthfully, she didn’t have to. He was already there.

An hour after landing in London, Evie had a hotel room.

Two hours after landing in London, she was kidnapped from her hotel.

8888888888

Evie didn’t wake up in a hospital bed, this time. She woke up on an airplane.

The jolt that woke her up stung her wrists. There was a sour-smelling hood over her head, but as soon as she stopped herself from pitching forward and hitting her head on the seat in front of her, someone yanked it off.

The brightness of un-filtered sunlight through the aircraft’s windows blinded her to tears at first. When she was able to adjust, without the comfort of rubbing her eyes with the hands that were shackled to her seat, she saw a white-haired man kneeling in the row of seats in front of her. There was something familiar about him. It made her unsettled, as if there had been a warning she’d forgotten, a danger unheeded.

“You remember me, don’t you?” the man said. He had an accent she couldn’t place. It sounded Eastern European but with American vowel sounds, as if his English teacher had been from America instead of speaking with the more fluid UK pronunciations.

She didn’t nod or shake her head, but stared at him instead.

“Try this,” he said, reaching for her. Throwing herself back in the seat wasn’t far enough away to avoid him.

* * *

_Evie was in a concrete room with a table in the center of it. It looked like a cross between an execution table, with padded arm restraints, and an autopsy table, as there was a catch basin underneath it with crusty dark grime inside. The smell was foul, reminiscent of the hood, and she tried to cover her mouth and nose and was thwarted by the weight of the chain. Except, in this vision, it was a longer chain, and it terminated at the ghastly table._

_A door crashed open. Instantly, as if it had been blocking the sound, Evie heard screaming. Four padded guards were rolling a gurney through the door, their outer hands following a thick rope strung under their burden. Evie watched in rapt horror at their faces; they were wearing old-style gas masks, but the eye protection was blacked out. Their heads were covered by thick helmets which seemed to have been modified to completely block sound. She couldn’t see an inch of skin._

_She realized that the rope was acting as a guide wire, and the soldiers carrying the gurney were taking fairly heavy precautions. That was when she looked at the gurney._

_It was the kneeling man. He was gaunt, covered in blood, and wailing in agony. The four sensory-deprived guards deposited the man on the table, strapping him in, before reversing course with the gurney._

_A Russian-accented voice sounded on a squeaking, aged public address system._

_“You may begin.”_

* * *

Evie slumped down in her seat as the now-healthy man removed his hand.

“I don’t have to touch you to show those things, but doing it fosters that impression. Makes people sloppy, assumptions like that.”

Evie licked her dry lips. “Was that where we--”

 _“Our_ HYDRA base? Well spotted.”

He replaced the hood and all Evie could hear was the steady hum of the aircraft engine. There was a rip in the hood, which was really nothing more than a bag made of woven yellow plant fibers of some sort. She could see a lightning-strike shaped section of the window, which right now only revealed blinding sunlight and clouds.

Evie decided that the only thing she could do at the moment to improve her situation would be to sleep. If HYDRA Doe could affect what she saw even when he wasn’t touching her, there wasn’t much point in trying to stay awake and listening for clues. Something told her he was the kind of vindictive, playful person who would lay false ones just to kill her spirit.

Before letting herself sleep, Evie leaned all the way over (slowly, there was no sense in bashing her head on the chair back she knew was there) to see if she could touch her neckline with one of her short-shackled hands. 

She could, and she could just barely feel that underneath the high-end shirt she was still wearing after her flight was the thin, worn-out material of Bruce’s t-shirt.

8888888888

“Here. For your bath.”

Evie sat up, her arms aching from the unnatural position she’d had to hold them in to stop her wrist skin from wearing thin. The room she was in had strange walls. They were bumpy and misshapen, and their boundaries weren’t square. The white-haired man crouched down beside her cot and looked up at her.

“Here’s the deal: you are a commodity. Every dictator and powerbroker in the world will have a Helix by their side by the end of the week. Congratulations, you’ve solved the problem of violence in the underworld!” he said in his grating whine of a voice. “Why waste resources checking to see which white-haired witch is the real one, eh? Your friends might, but they’ll have twenty or more fakes to chase.”

Evie blinked slowly, trying to understand the implications. Her eyelashes were tacky with unwashed salt. She could prevent herself from being emotional when she was awake, but not asleep, it seemed. A commodity, as a healer. Multiple rich assholes across the world wanted one of their own?

“There, I knew you weren’t stupid,” the white-haired man praised. “Now, it’s naturally better to have the REAL version, yes? Lucrative. So here’s how it works.”

The man shuffled his weight up onto the cot beside her, and she had to lean her body away not to collide with his.

“I see it on your face. Why tell you? Information is the enemy of complacency. But we’re a team, okay? You know what I can do. Today, we’ll go show you to the first buyer.”

“Buyer,” Evie whispered, horrified.

“Not as bad as you might think! You’ll have a home, and an easy, easy job. Be visible. Be a deterrent. If you’re compliant, you could even get a chance to make a difference somewhere other than in that damned ivory tower. Visit to hospitals, yes?”

She twitched in surprise, and her strange captor nudged her shoulder, hard.

“Didn’t think anyone knew about that? This has been in the works for a long time, Healer. You know what I can do. You’ve seen it, so have your Avengers. You obey? You have a life, might even save some truly deserving lives. You fight? You spend your time as an automaton with the added bonus of me as a roommate.”

He stood up. “Take the bath. Put on the best of the clothes you brought. Leave your hair down, no wig. No contacts. You have twenty minutes.”

8888888888

Her _broker_ called himself Draw.

They had three meetings with her dressed up in the cursed clothing that reminded her of Tony, wearing makeup that hid the bags under her eyes. Evie didn’t even get a chance to process what had prompted her flight to Europe, because she was too busy trying to cling to any scrap of humanity she had. Draw was _sadistic,_ threatening her with all manner of depraved things if she didn’t behave exactly as he expected. Despite all outward appearances, the base she was housed in was _not_ the simple warren of caves he pretended it was. She thought it was quite likely that it was an abandoned or dormant HYDRA base he’d discovered by rifling through the minds of various HYDRA goons.

She’d been in the Hellhole (as she called it) for four days before she remembered something from her transcription work for Natasha and Fury.

There were multiple references to a base in Lebanon. Part of their rationale for abandoning more intensive scientific research there was that the cave system was pre-existing, and the HYDRA workers were poorly informed about their geography. As such, locals had considered it a badge of honor to sneak in and take things, heedless of threats or the danger from the actual stolen goods.

At night, Evie studied the room she’d been shackled to. It was one of the ones turned into a room by setting up a wall in concrete where the cave bubbled out into the shape of the room itself. Every time she was walked through a passageway, she’d try to remember its characteristics and distance from her ‘base’ of a room.

Evie pinned all of her hopes on remembering it properly. Part of the way she did that was to fracture her myriad feelings for Tony into sections, assigning each to a part of the cave. Pride for his accomplishments as Iron Man got her through the buyer meetings in the largest cavern. Evie put on Tony’s self-confidence as armor of her own. The walkways to and from her room were the only place she thought about his mistrust of her, his reaction when she’d finally told him the truth. This helped her defend herself from some of the men her ‘broker’ employed. Evie became known as irrational, quick to anger, perpetually resentful, unpredictable. Draw thought it was hilarious, because he could tell it was an act.

She only let herself think about the joyful, loving way Tony had acted with her when she took baths, because that was the only time she could cry without anyone noticing it and using it against her.

Evie truly lived in the cave she spent most of her time shackled inside. There, she filled her mind with Tony’s inventive spirit, his ability to MacGuyver his way into what he wanted. When on the fifth day she’d woken with what she was certain was a scratched cornea from the particles in the air, Evie saw it as an opportunity. She started collecting piles of the dust, collecting it from the wall, her eyes shut, focusing on her life as it was before. Bruce’s lessons on meditation were a godsend, during those hours.

On the ninth day in the cave, she was told that one of the prospective buyers had firmed up to a deal, and she realized she was going to have to put her meagre plan to the test.

Her captors had allowed her to keep her clothes, but not the bag. She’d overheard Draw implying that women have a personal, _spiritual_ connection to their clothes, and it would keep her calm and compliant. On the nights when she wasn’t scraping away at the walls making her dry pepper spray, she picked apart their seams. That ninth night, with instructions that she would be leaving in the morning, Evie hid handmade cloth packages of painful dust in her sleeves. She’d also made two protective pads for her palms in case she’d need to climb, once she got away. _If_ she got away.

They were no ARC reactor, but they were what she had.

8888888888

Evie was already awake when Draw came, the next morning. She had heard him release most of the workers from their contacts the night before, cheapskate that he was. The only ones left had been guarding her, but the key instruction they’d all been given was to only ever subdue her, never with violence. They were far from any medical facilities, and she was valuable.

One of the things she’d learned from watching the real Tony had been the way he would always use everything around him to the greatest effect he could, whether it was props to his humor, technology, or simple objects turned into tools. So, she’d slept in Clint’s ballcap, braiding the hair that stuck out through the back. As soon as Draw leaned over her to impose his will, Evie had mimed wiping her eyes clear of sleep. Then, she pulled the flap of fabric that would drag out her hidden cache of stinging dust, right in his face. The brim of the cap protected her own eyes from the pieces that flew back towards her.

Draw took in a huge breath and immediately started choking. With a rock she’d smuggled into her room, she smashed him right in the temple with it as he gasped for air, and her tormentor went down, temporarily unconscious.

True to her plan, she upended her cot, rolling his body half onto the underside, pulling off his distinctive camo jacket from that arm. Evie rolled him the rest of the way, releasing the jacket completely. She covered him with the blanket and put on his coat.

Evie wove her way through the passages. Draw seemed to have gotten completely complacent, because she didn’t see _anyone._ That changed things. Reversing course, she grabbed a few things from the supply nook, namely a radio and a handful of granola bars. There were no batteries that weren’t already in use and hard to remove, so there wasn’t a hope to activate the tracker she knew was in Clint’s hat. Evie was disappointed until she thrust her hand into his coat and came out with the Range Rover keys. _That_ was going to make a huge difference.

It took a frightening ten minutes to work her way out the correct way to the entrance to the cave. She had only been in that section once, after all. 

Evie flat-out _ran_ to the Rover, hopping into the seat and pulling the keys out. Draw would only stay disabled and unable to give chase for so long. She needed to hurry.

As she pushed the key into the ignition, the key seemed to warp and distort in her hand. Between one blink and the next, the vehicle disappeared, and she found that she was in her room, sitting on the cot.

Draw laughed.

“A masterful escape attempt, I must say. I only had to add a few things to make it more realistic for you, your imagination really is _something.”_

Evie shook her head to clear it, trying to figure out what was real. Draw grabbed her arm roughly, pulling free the dust pouches she’d worked so hard to craft and conceal.

“The sale?” she asked, wincing to use the term in regards to herself.

“Tomorrow. And I’ll be prepared.” Draw left, apparently done taunting her with his abilities.

Evie was exhausted. The last thing she wanted to do was dwell on what had just happened, but there was something nagging at her. Something was wrong, but for the life of her, Evie couldn’t figure out what it was.

Draw left her alone all day, not even bothering to bring her food. Hunger helped sharpen her mind, but it was still past dinner when Evie finally realized what she’d missed.

She tore off Clint’s hat. Using her fingertips, Evie went over the entire surface of it, and sure enough, she found that, in the brim, there was an _edge_ that shouldn’t be there. When she sought out its boundaries, she was left with a two inch square object.

Evie sat down carefully on the cot and considered her options.

Option one: this was another fake-out. Any and all efforts she would take to activate the tracker would only cause her distress and disappointment when she discovered that it was not real.

Option two: the tracker was real. Somehow Draw knew about it, and he’d been holding onto the information, possibly to taunt her with once he delivered her to the ‘buyer’ on the following day.

The thing was, Evie was looking at permanent captivity. Would there be a drawback to _trying?_ She didn’t think so.

Unwilling to put off trying to get out of there any longer, Evie called out for one of the guards that was probably outside her door.

“I’m hungry. _Hungry,”_ she repeated, knowing they didn’t understand much English.

“No.”

“Please?”

The man slapped aside her curtain, and, her heart beating as fast as it probably ever had, Evie threw a gathered-up handful of sharp dust into his face. Then, she slipped past him out into the corridor. Instead of _chasing_ her, though, the guard started shouting something into his radio. 

The supply closet was close, and Evie ducked into it. She searched shelf after shelf, but didn’t see a radio, and she could sense her time was running out. Then, she saw it. A 9 volt battery. It was next to the pile of granola bars straight out of the illusion. Thinking fast, Evie tucked the battery into her shoe, despite the tight fit. Then, she grabbed as many granola bars as she could and headed back toward her room.

She was met in the corridor by Draw and two guards.

“I’m _hungry,_ asshole!” she shouted at him, ripping open a packet and cramming as much of one of them into her mouth as she could.

It shouldn’t have worked.

He should have searched her.

Evie knew she would spend the rest of the night wondering whether she was still caught up in an illusion or not.

8888888888

It took almost to dawn to get the tracker out of the hat. In the end, she’d had to resort to sawing at the band with a (in relation to the other parts) ‘sharp’ section of the cave wall.

Evie almost started to cry when she got the damned thing out and it didn’t appear to have any place to put contacts from a battery. The entire thing was flat except for one end, where it bulged just slightly in relation to the rest of it. Her hands were bleeding, and if they hadn’t been, she would have completely missed seeing a join in the plastic. As it was, she’d had to lay flat on the floor and hold the thing close to the curtain to use the lantern light from the corridor.

She used her fingernail to pry the pieces apart, and there it was. An old battery, its connections still attached, but so small that it had clearly died and gone dormant years before.

Evie sent up a thank you to the patron saint of Avengers in caves.

The hat was ruined, though the new battery was too big to put back inside it anyway. With fingers that kept slipping because of the blood, Evie wired up the tracker and started crying when she saw a green light, barely visible, on one corner of it. The tiny LED probably wouldn’t have even shown through the brim, but it was such a relief that she’d done _something_ that Evie felt like it was shining in her heart, as cheesy as that was.

The sun was starting to rise when she’d finished hiding the evidence. She’d ended up putting the damned battery back into her shoe, grateful as hell that it ‘fit’ where it had before, with a strip of ruined hat material protecting her foot from the contacts, and the tracker flat against the bottom of her foot. The hat she crammed into the disintegrating foam of her small mattress. 

When Draw walked in an hour later, Evie was ready for him. He could convince her of all manner of things with his powers, but crucially, he couldn’t _stop the tracker from working_.

“Do I need to make you compliant?” he asked.

“Please don’t,” she said, pushing forward the desperation in her voice. 

To her complete surprise, that was enough for Draw. He had four guards with him to escort her to the Range Rover, two of whom sat in the back seat to come on the drive. Evie sat and waited while he’d piled all of his containers into the vehicle, hoping that someone in the US military was scanning known HYDRA bases for distress signals. She wondered if Draw was saving his powers for an expected confrontation, or even if he didn’t want to simulate using powers while already employing them. More likely, a compliant Evie would be no fun to taunt and torture.

When they got to the airstrip, Draw’s mood turned jubilant, and she could see why. She was out of options.

Evie stood beside the plane, her foot aching as she watched him unload the Rover. Even if she could run away now, there wasn’t anywhere to run _to._ She closed her eyes and finally gave herself permission to think the one thought she’d been avoiding: at least Tony won’t miss me.

“Where is it?”

Draw was walking towards her, holding up the ruined hat. Rather than being angry, he was _laughing._ He must have saved the reveal to taunt her, now that there was no possible hope of rescue.

“I don’t know what you--”

“I didn’t even have to trick you, this time! You tricked _yourself!”_ he gloated. “We’re in the middle of nowhere! Those chips have range of, what? 100 meters? You’re a needle on a planet of haystacks.”

Evie had always known that, of course. She’d just chosen to try anyway, because the alternative was the exact same outcome, minus the self-respect that trying had given her.

Draw pointed at the airplane. “Time to go.”

As she climbed the stairs, Evie couldn’t help but think about all the times in the Marvel films things worked out at the very last minute. Now would be that time, she knew. Instead, she made it all the way onto the plane, and settled into a seat not far from the door. The rumble of the engine entering its starting up sequence set a deep, rolling sort of dread loose in the pit of her stomach. In the cockpit, she could hear Draw and the pilot arguing about their contract.

“I draw the line at _human trafficking!”_ the pilot said. “This was supposed to be a simple transport.”

Evie wondered if that was why Draw hadn’t shackled her this time. It wasn’t like he had to. The inside of the plane was stifling hot, given that it had been sitting without power, and she was at least grateful that her captor had left the door open after the goons still on the ground removed the stairs.

For a tantalizing few moments, Evie wondered if there were parachutes stowed away somewhere, and whether she could grab one and try to jump out. She looked over at the door and the glimpse of the land beyond it, trying to picture herself jumping. Evie couldn’t even picture leaping out of it _now,_ with the stairs removed, much less once the plane was airborne. 

There was a black dot in the far distance of the sky. She wondered just how big the bird would need to be, and how far away, for her to see it like that. Evie reached down and pulled out the tracker, massaging her foot where the battery had dug in for so long, that morning. When she glanced back out the window, the ‘bird’ was much closer.

It wasn’t a bird at all. It was the Iron Patriot.

She shot a look at the open cockpit door. Both men looked busy, and the suit flying toward them was coming from the immediate left. Evie unbuckled swiftly and got up, starting for the exit. She’d almost reached it when Draw grabbed her from behind, both hands locking together to bodily throw her away from the door. The pilot shouted in alarm, and her captor kicked her, knocking Evie into the bulkhead and dazing her. When she was able to roll over, Draw had pulled the door shut and was shouting for the pilot to get the plane airborne.

Suddenly, there was a tremendous sound at the back of the plane, and the tail section exploded into pieces. At the same time, the plane lurched forward, the sounds of the engines screaming as they were thrown to full throttle.

“What are you _doing?”_ she screamed, crawling toward the cockpit. The view from the large windows made her arms fail underneath her. The runway was long and flat, but it ran parallel to a set of scrubby hills which curved around in front of the runway after a stretch of empty land. “Stop the plane,” she said, but her words were carried away by the wind.

Then, Draw did something incomprehensible.

“You want to live?” he asked her, pulling out a handgun. “Get to work.”

Draw pointed his gun at the pilot’s stomach and fired. The man screamed in agony, throwing himself sideways to avoid turning dooming the plane more than it already was.

Evie threw herself at him, her arm outstretched. As soon as she made contact, the time dilation of healing began, prompted by her desperate desire to save him. This time it was chaotic, terrifying. The whine of the engines became a single wall of sound, and because of the cramped quarters of the cockpit, Evie had to practically lay on top of the man. Draw’s bullet had wreaked havoc, and she felt stupid for not having pushed to test abdomen wounds with Tony. They’d done a lot with bone healing, burns, and even shrapnel removal, but the cross-contamination between perforated organs wasn’t something she’d even _thought_ of.

The resonant waves from her healing seemed to press back down on her, compressed by the close quarters of the cockpit. She poured as much of her energy into healing as she could, knowing that they needed to stop the plane, remembering the bank of hills that rose up at the end of the runway. As her mind raced through the various steps to restoring the pilot’s body, Evie felt a familiar ache in her chest, but this time, it didn’t feel like her lungs, but her heart.

 _At least I didn’t die in the cave,_ she told herself. That would likely have still been hard for Tony after what he’d gone through, even if he hated the very thought of her.

Just as she was starting to repair the entrance wound itself, Evie was lifted off of the floor, away from the man she was trying to save.

“No!” she screamed, kicking to free herself.

“We have to get out of here, plane’s out of control!” The male voice sounded like it was filtered through a mic, similar to the way Tony sounded when he was suited up. 

Evie pushed ineffectively on the iron grip of the man’s arm around her waist. “I’m almost done, just a few more--”

In the cockpit in front of them, Draw turned around and she got a terrifying glimpse of what it looked like to have a gun pointed in your direction before the armored man holding her spun, deflecting the bullets.

“It’s too late,” he white-haired lunatic laughed. Evie peeked around the soldier as he started dragging the prone form of the pilot back into the body of the plane.

“Move back,” the Iron Patriot ordered, pointing back toward the hole in the back. She stared at him, uncomprehendingly.

“You can’t save everyone,” Draw shouted. “Maybe no one!” He aimed the gun at the pilot, and it was one of the most difficult moments of Evie’s life. Everything told her she should try to stop the bullet, even if that meant with her own body. The pilot had done nothing wrong! _She_ was his cause of misery, but if he were shot again, she could heal him. There wasn’t a way for her to heal herself.

Rhodes lunged with his upper body, trying to block the gunfire, but it wasn’t fast enough. Evie couldn’t see the wound, but the amount of blood told her she wouldn’t be pulling the man back, this time. The Iron Patriot put up his hand as if he’d like to fire his repulsors, but seconds later, he put his hand back down.

 _“Damn!”_ Colonel Rhodes swore. “Okay, time to go.” He grabbed her and turned his body so that she was protected by his armor while he fired his repulsors at the back of the plane again, widening the hole. Evie looked back at the cockpit, trying to see how close they were to the hills-- it was _very_ close. Then she realized she couldn’t see Draw.

Evie was so focused on trying to see where Draw was that she didn’t understand what was happening when Rhodes tucked her against his chest and fired his repulsors. The two of them accelerated out of the ruined plane and into the air above the airfield. He circled around and Evie saw the plane collide with the uplifted ground at the end of the runway. She held on as they flew away, but she couldn’t watch the plane disintegrate, knowing the body of the pilot she hadn’t been able to save was still inside. She rested her forehead on the metal armor and just sobbed. If she’d taken the bullets meant for him, would he still be alive, would her rescuer have taken her out of the plane if she were mortally injured or not?

After a few minutes of flight time, Rhodes descended onto a high, flat area, setting her down carefully and backing up. He flipped up his helmet’s visor.

She must have reacted positively to seeing him, because he said, “You know who I am?”

“You’re Rhodey,” Evie said, wiping the tears from her face with a sleeve. Rhodey’s confused but honest smile did a lot for her bleak mood.

“Do you know who sent me?”

“Steve Rogers, is my guess,” she told him with a sad smile. Rhodes leaned back and looked at her, confused. “Am I wrong?” she asked.

“No, not exactly,” he said. He shook his head like he was trying to refocus away from whatever assumption he’d had about her. “Okay, give me a sec, need to let my guys know we made it to the spot. They’ll be by with a helicopter to pick us up.”

Evie did not ask him about the pilot’s body in the wrecked plane, and she didn’t say anything about Draw, who she was certain had gotten away. With the former, she felt like it would be unfair to bring up Rhodey’s failure to protect the other civilian in the airplane. With the latter, she felt a powerful compulsion not to say anything. Evie supposed that was Draw’s back-door plan all along; Rhodey was in no way a stupid or sloppy soldier, though. He would send his people to search for the illusionist in the scrublands around the landing strip. 

She crouched down and looked out at the landscape around them. It was desolate and beautiful, and her survival to see it had been anything but assured. Renewed tears started flowing down her cheeks, this time of gratitude as much as regret. She heard Rhodes finish up with his report, and then the servo sounds of his suit approached. Slowly, she stood up, but she didn’t look over at him.

“You know, two months ago I was talking with my good friend. He told me I wouldn’t believe what he’d figured out-- that he’d found his wife from another dimension. Now, you have to know the guy to know this isn’t even that much of a stretch, right?” Rhodes chuckled. Her heart spasmed in her chest, but Evie didn’t stop him. She needed to hear the end of the story he planned to tell. “Every few days he’d report to me. ‘She knows my coffee order,’ or, ‘You should have seen her trying to buff out a scuff mark on my armor,’ or ‘This woman always pushes back, Rhodey.’” She could see Rhodes looking over at her, but Evie kept her eyes on the horizon. “Then one night he calls me up, it’s late, I wanna tell him off but he says, ‘It’s _her,_ Rhodey.’”

“He was wrong,” she said, unable to listen to the happier parts of the story without feeling a responsibility to refute them.

“That’s the thing. My friend, he’s got a bit of a destiny problem. Too much responsibility is one thing, but how do you talk to a guy who doesn’t just have the metaphorical weight of the world on his shoulders, but the real deal, too? A man like that, he can’t just meet a girl, fall for her, and decide to go for it. He’s got to feel like there’s fate involved.”

“So what did he tell you the next time he called?” Evie asked in a quiet, dead tone.

“He hasn’t called. You were right-- Steve Rogers sent me.”

That got her to look over.

“I tried to tell him, Colonel Rhodes. He doesn’t like being wrong.”

“So who are you, to Tony Stark?” Rhodes asked. His question was direct, and though he’d imparted his natural authority to it as a leader of men, the real impetus to answer stemmed from the true friendship the two men shared.

Evie smiled wryly. “In which universe?”

 _“This_ one! Damn, you two deserve each other. _This_ is the universe that matters!” Rhodes said, taking off his helmet. He didn’t look angry as much as deeply frustrated. “Both of you are miserable, and it’s almost as if you like it!”

“How can you possibly know that? You just met me!” she protested.

“I’ve been hearing about you for _weeks!_ I could probably describe the face you make when he pisses you off with absolute accuracy!”

“What the hell does that have to do with anything?” Evie practically shouted at him. She was confused, defensive, and a man had just died because she’d made the wrong choice. This was not the kind of shit she wanted to be dealing with.

“Listen to me: where you came from is _gone._ It doesn’t matter anymore. The only reason my friend is so focused on who you were in your old life is because _you_ are. Did he maybe fall in love with an idea first? I don’t know. Personally, I think he realized he had feelings for you and felt the need to justify them with his theory, but the end result is the same.”

Evie’s mind rebelled. Tony had talked about her to his friend? For _weeks?_ Surely that was about the theory, just as Rhodey said it was. But… love? Not just a prior sense of ownership, for lack of a better term?

Her mind flashed back to the night of the gala, how he’d touched her, the way he’d looked at her. But that was quickly replaced with the expression he wore as she’d told him the truth about her own universe. He’d looked betrayed-- _tricked,_ almost. She shook her head.

“I’m no relationship counselor. I probably shouldn’t have said a damned thing, but I really miss the joy he had in his voice. I can’t help but think that doesn’t have to be a thing of the past.”

Something about what Rhodes had said made her look at him sharply. He said Tony hadn’t spoken to him, but then, just now, Rhodes said he missed the joy in Tony’s voice.

“What did he tell you, Rhodey?” she repeated.

Rhodes let out a puff of frustrated air. “He said you were smart.” It sounded more like a complaint, like he was upset that she’d caught him.

Evie shook her head and pushed back. “That was before. What did he say the last time you talked to him?”

The sound of a helicopter in the far distance caught their attention, and Rhodes hit a button on his suit that lit up a beacon for them to catch sight of. He started waving it. Evie walked over so she was in his line of sight.

“He said you fell in love with an idea, and so did he,” Rhodes finally said. His words were almost swallowed by the rotor sounds of the helicopter as it landed a safe distance away. “I think he’s wrong. I think the _idea_ is what’s holding both of you back.”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just now on a reread, I discovered that there's a missing few sentences about her no longer being shackled after about a week in the cave. I don't know exactly when I edited it out, and I don't remember where it was, but since it's somewhat of a continuity error (how does she try to escape without the chains being unlocked first), I thought I would signpost that this was something that slipped past me.


	13. Civil Twilight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha offers some real talk before flying Evie back to the tower, where Bruce has set up something to make her feel better. After a team debrief about what happend to her, Evie and Tony fight about what it was she was doing by not being honest regarding the origins of her MCU knowledge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so real talk: I'm writing an original fairy tale romance story at the same time as this, and it's turning out a lot more dark than I expected, and I needed some validation so here's a chapter today, because I CAN.
> 
> This chapter includes explanations of what Tony was thinking and why he was so upset! He's, uh, still upset. But we'll fix it soon. With sex. And reconciliation. And banter. Next chapter. BUT FIRST, have some Nat, Bruce, and Tony.

### Chapter Thirteen: Civil Twilight

Evie got the impression that Lt. Colonel Rhodes was not usually a meddler, but that he’d done it almost out of a sense of self-defense. Once they were on the helicopter, his demeanor changed to that of a kind, slightly stern caregiver. There was meant to be a medic aboard to check her out, but they’d had to be dropped off at another location. The really unexpected thing, though, was that once the helicopter landed at the base, Evie was greeted by Natasha Romanoff.

“It’s good to see you safe,” the other woman said by way of greeting. Natasha’s smile was genuine, and she led Evie to a utilitarian room with a table full of food-- and a coffee from Mario’s. “It’ll be cold, but there’s a pot here to warm it up. Bruce wanted you to have a signal that he’s okay.”

“Cold is _fine,”_ Evie said, falling on the cup and folding back the lid. The liquid inside was every bit as delicious as if it had been handed to her from Mario himself. She helped herself to a plate of food, grateful that there was a variety, but it wasn’t so much that she felt it was wasted on her.

“Evie, you should know that Tony told us what happened,” Natasha said once she had finished half of her plate.

Evie put her fork down. “Which ‘what happened?’” she asked carefully.

“The part where we’re all unnaturally good looking because someone in another universe cast good-looking actors to play us,” Natasha said, her lips quirking into a wry smile. 

“I never thought of it that way,” Evie admitted. “Here’s hoping everyone took it better than Tony did.”

Nat tipped her head to the side, looking curious. “How did Tony take it?”

“Natasha, he locked down the entire tower within ten minutes of finding out!” Evie pushed her plate away and crossed her arms over her stomach. “He had this look on his face…” she stopped and sat up. “Anyway, not well.”

“I thought he locked it down because he was afraid you’d leave. And you did,” Nat said in a studiously neutral tone. “He called a meeting, said you were upset and had left. Considering Fury just told us that we should be on high alert thanks to the chatter they were hearing about you across the world, it was a concern.”

Evie didn’t know what to say to this, so she looked down at the table and waited for Natasha to say something else.

“Bruce wanted to know _why_ you’d left, thought it would shed light on where you would go. Tony said you, and I quote, ‘finally told the truth about who you were back home.’”

Evie made a little cringing head movement, waiting for the rest of the sentence.

“Well,” Natasha said, crossing her legs and sitting back in her chair. She looked down at her hands and then over at Evie. “They needed to remodel that particular floor anyway.”

Her stomach dropped, despite the clear signals from Natasha that this event was something both inevitable and possibly amusing. “Oh, Bruce.”

“He feels better now. Told us that your disappearing act was basically a ticking time bomb for the Other Guy. Tony just… accelerated it.” Nat looked down at the table and smiled, letting out a small laugh that was almost a cough. “He came to dinner the next night and told us about the fictional characters, cinematic universe thing. Tony wasn’t there.”

“It’s been over a week, though, so they’re better now, right?”

“I’ll let you see for yourself,” Natasha said. 

Evie sat there and thought about what she could mean for a while, sipping the rest of her cold coffee. When she looked back over, Nat looked like she was struggling with what to say for the first time. “Nat?”

“This is hard for me, I’ll admit it.” Natasha let out a breath, and then smiled, all signs of her unhappiness or hesitation expertly packed away. “I just need to know. Tony played the audio of when you told him about the movie stuff. You knew… some pretty private things. I need to know what it showed about me. The Red Room--”

“Hardly anything, I promise. It’s, it’s all implied, that it was terrible on you, that you were forced into a life that made you deadly, and you’re the best at it because you had to survive,” Evie said, the words rushing to reassure.

“It’s just that you never seemed completely comfortable, you know, around me. And I tucked it away, maybe you felt threatened, I don’t know. Many women do, I’m used to it. But then this… Thinking about millions of people knowing that--”

“Do you remember right before you went to bring Bruce in, to convince him to join the Avengers, you were in a situation where you were being ‘interrogated?’” Evie asked, doing the scare quotes with her fingers. “You were in a black dress, bright red hair, and you just proceed to _lay waste_ to all of the guys there acting like they’re threatening you?”

One side of Natasha’s mouth turned up into a very self-satisfied smile. “Yeah?”

“That’s one of the first scenes of you in the main movie, the Avengers. That’s what people think of when they see you: a masterful fighter, both mentally and physically. Any backstory just serves to show what you’ve overcome, though I can’t promise there isn’t new stuff since I was ripped out of there,” Evie said, feeling her eyes prickle with an odd kind of pride. This was her _teammate,_ not just someone she knew _of,_ anymore. “There were these strings of movies. Thor had a couple, Steve obviously does, Tony, etc. Tony’s movies have you taking down a bunch of that jerk Justin Hammer’s guys.”

“They never give the girls a film, do they?” Nat sighed. She looked relieved and proud. “I brought the Quinjet. We can leave whenever you want.”

“How… did everyone else take it?” Evie asked as they packed up the rest of the food to take with them.

“Mostly they were fascinated. Suddenly a lot of the things you knew about made sense. General consensus was that they had thought you and Fury were tight,” Nat said, laughing a little. “That may have contributed to my reticence a bit. Fury and I are _actually_ tight.”

As they walked out to where the Quinjet was parked, Evie reached out and touched Nat’s arm, the first time she’d ever risked touching the other woman without warning. Obviously Nat saw her movement coming, but she didn’t react in any other way than stopping to see what Evie wanted.

“How do you deal with a decision that doesn’t directly kill someone, but still… gets a person killed? I’m just lost, here,” Evie admitted.

“Worry when it’s easy to shake off, first of all.” Nat moved to stand directly in front of Evie. “Context matters. A master chef making a royal dinner fully earns their regret if they screw that up, and a mom trying to make breakfast for a houseful of sick kids is not to blame if some pancakes burn. Slot yourself in where appropriate.” She reached her arm out behind her and hit a button on a remote, opening the door to the jet.

“Hey, can I stow away?” It was Rhodes, in the suit.

“Sure,” Nat said, nodding at Evie in a way that promised more if the subject needed to be revisited at a later time.

As they settled in for the flight, Natasha turned around from the command seat and said, “They never did get you any gear, did they?”

Evie shook her head.

“We’re tragically underusing you. We fit you up with some good armor, protective stuff, and you could trail us, heal up and move casualties in a really helpful way,” she said, hitting a series of commands to set the autopilot.

Rhodes stretched his legs out in front of him, across from Evie. He was dressed in civilian clothes now, the Iron Patriot suit lashed down on the wall beside him. “Is it bad that I took some time thinking about how a villain might use a person with your abilities? When we found out that there was, I guess you could say a _market,_ for lookalikes, if not the real thing, I just thought, man,” Rhodes shook his head. “There’s some scary-ass applications for a healer when it comes to interrogations and stuff. Real Kiefer Sutherland, 24 kind of nonsense.”

“I wouldn’t rule it out, but I’d like Steve to still be able to look at me straight,” Nat joked. “But in a tough situation, fate of the world kind of thing? I’d consider it.”

“I wished I could _self_ heal when I was shackled in the cave,” Evie told them. “Break my hand, whatever I needed to do, to get it out of the irons, then heal it back up? I would have done that in a heartbeat. I wonder how many people think about doing that.”

“Rescued a few of them, looking for you,” Rhodes said, like it wasn’t a revelation.

She thought about what Draw had said, about there being multiple Helixes for her friends to chase. It had never occurred to her that they might be unwilling. “I’m sorry, what?” 

“You should be sorry, at least a little. Next time you fight with Tony, all I’m asking for is fifteen minutes of reflection,” Natasha told her, not turning around. “Breathe, Evie,” she added, catching a glimpse of Evie’s mini freak out.

“Rescued--” She tried to listen to Nat, took in a deep breath, then another.

“Before we caught your RFID signal on a pass-by of HYDRA bases, we followed leads on white-haired women. It helped that everyone trying to show off had video.”

Lt. Colonel Rhodes had blown up the back of a plane to drag her out of it, and he was talking as if that and this was all in a day’s work.

“Ironic that the person holding you was one of the ones who wasn’t advertising that fact,” Rhodes continued.

“I think he was,” she said, shuddering. “But he wasn’t showing me off. He was trying to get paid.” After that, both Nat and Rhodey seemed to want to leave her alone with her thoughts, and after what Nat said about reflection, Evie was reluctantly okay with that. She resolved to ask Fury to keep looking out for the silver-haired fake Helixes. Just because Evie was safe didn’t mean all of them were.

8888888888

Steve was the one out waiting for her when the jet landed. He swept her up in a big hug and told her he was grateful she was back in one piece. Evie’s face was smashed up against his chest at the time, so he didn’t see the look on her face that would have told him that she didn’t think that was strictly true.

8888888888

Hours later, Evie and Bruce were in her living room inside an honest-to-goodness blanket fort. Bruce told her he’d started building it for her when it became clear that she wasn’t just hiding, but actively being kept from them. She’d mentioned, just once, that she’d always felt safe in them, especially when she had gotten in trouble. Evie wondered if this was Bruce intuitively knowing that she might feel that way when she came back.

Just as she’d thought he might, Bruce had figured out that they could follow her path in an imprecise way by searching for and using videos that were ‘Evie adjacent,’ and figuring out where she had gone from there. They’d been able to find her right up until the vehicle carrying her unconscious body drove into a restricted area in the airport.

The fort was high enough that she and Bruce could sit on the floor seats he brought from his apartment, but it still felt ‘authentic,’ with some PVC scaffolding, a bunch of comforters of various types, and a couple high-powered LED flashlights. They ate Indian takeout and watched the sunset, talking about everything _but_ her recent experience and the events that occurred in the tower during her absence. Finally, Evie pushed back her floor seat and brought in a mess of pillows from her bed, making a little nest for herself to look out over the lights of the city.

“If you don’t want to hear about it, you don’t have to,” she said, quietly. “I’ll be okay.”

“I want you to. I took a, I don’t know what it was. Xanax, probably. There’s still six hours on it,” Bruce said.

“You took _drugs_ for me?” Evie sat up to stare at him. Bruce had opted to lie on his back without any pillows.

“You deserve to be able to talk to me about it without worrying I’m going to mess up your apartment.”

“Nat told me about the meeting,” she admitted.

“It was a bad faith accusation on his part. I know you’d struggled with that from the very beginning,” Bruce said in a relatively good-natured voice. “The elevator was just fine, everyone got out of there.”

“You got the note, though?”

Bruce turned on his side to look at her. “I knew you _thought_ you’d be fine, but the press went _crazy_ about the Helix thing. It’s everywhere, we have crowds of reporters trying to sneak in, all of that. And Tony--” Bruce sighed and sat up into a cross-legged position. “The meeting was the evening after you left. He’d had all day of dodging calls and questions, everyone talking about the two of you, how happy and in love you’d seemed, at the gala.”

Evie retreated back into her nest of pillows, at that.

“I’m just saying he was not doing well by the meeting, and neither was I. I’d figured out he’d said something to you that got you to leave, despite what you’d written in your note. And when he saw the note--”

“You showed him the note?” Evie asked, her voice a little high-pitched.

“It was just a bad scene, for everyone. We worked it out eventually.”

“Nat implied as much. What happened?”

Bruce was quiet for so long Evie rolled over to see his expression. He was looking down at his lap with a small smile on his face.

“Bruce?”

“I ran into Tony a few days ago and it didn’t go well. I punched him. As me, not the Other Guy. I didn’t think I could do that.” He looked up toward her with his head still mostly down, and his eyes were bright and happy.

Evie covered her mouth with her hand. “That’s a really great outcome, all things considered!”

“Considering you were locked up who knows where for over a week after he said something to hurt you--”

She cut him off. “He didn’t. It… he was hurt. He was so convinced we’d been something to each other in my universe, he thought I was punishing him for what the other Tony had done, whatever it was. He wouldn’t listen, I ended up screaming at him about all of it. Telling him-- well. Nat said he played the sound recording. When did it start?”

“It started with you calling him not real.”

“Before that, he suggested maybe we’d had kids and one of them had died because he hadn’t saved them fast enough,” Evie said, remembering the glow of Tony’s ARC reactor and the low, early dawn light illuminating how confused and angry he was.

“I’m sorry,” Bruce said.

“So am I.” She pulled the extra blanket she’d grabbed up around her shoulders. “I left to find Fury. I thought maybe, I don’t know. If ‘Helix’ was a thing, maybe I could hop around and do some sort of intelligence gathering under the guise of visiting hospitals to save lives.”

“A goodwill tour,” Bruce said. “It’s not a bad idea.”

“What about the PR problem? People being upset no matter how much time I spend healing people?”

Bruce started smoothing his fingertips along the spot on the carpet he’d scrubbed after dropping Vindaloo curry sauce on it. “That’s… not going to be a problem.”

“What? What happened?”

“You were Tony’s date for the gala, Evie. Everyone knows how, how self-centered he can be,” Bruce said, falling over his words. He seemed almost embarrassed. “He told the press you weren’t a circus act, and he wasn’t going to share you. Ever since then, there have been pictures of fake versions of you across the world, women with their hair bleached and dyed, that kind of stuff, they’ve been demanding Tony prove you’re still in the tower.”

“He’s deflecting by saying we’re a couple?” Evie’s chest hurt like it did when she was healing a severe injury. _I’m healing FROM a severe injury._

“You’re both invited to the White House, sometime next week,” Bruce scooted to the edge of the fort and stood, walking out of sight.

Evie didn’t know what to think. It was a smart strategy, to use Tony’s known selfishness as a shield to keep people from demanding her ‘services.’ She even almost, _almost_ felt bad for him, having to pretend they were a happy, loving couple the entire time after she’d left. But Evie had no idea how she was going to be able to be in the same room with him, much less in public, meeting the _President._

At the same time, of all the people in the country to be able to come up with a plan for her to visit hospitals and not end up with an expectation that she should be spending _all_ of her time there, it was the First Lady. She had the reputation and the clout necessary.

Evie dragged herself out of her comfortable nest of pillows and blanket to find out where Bruce had gone. She found him in the kitchenette drinking a glass of water.

“If he hurt you so badly that you can’t do it, I’ll be there for you, I’ll back whatever you want to do,” Bruce said, putting the glass down but keeping his hand on it.

“But?” Evie prompted.

“But if you can do this thing at the White House, it would help. Immensely. We’re on the knife-edge here, with your existence. The goodwill won’t last forever, and people who lost loved ones are going to wonder why a group like the Avengers would keep someone with your powers secret, hiding away, when you could have been saving people. JARVIS did a calculation of the people who died of severe trauma in the city since you arrived, people who lived at least a half hour. Honestly, the numbers aren’t great. They add up every day. I don’t think anyone actually expects you to spend every waking moment in a hospital, but every day that you don’t set foot in one raises that tally. It’ll reach the number of dead from the Chitauri attack at some point.”

“I don’t suppose I can tell you of all people that I never asked for this,” Evie said with a heavy sigh.

“That part would have been good writing, in the movie version.”

“Oh, my God. Nat is going to _kill me!_ ” Evie said.

“What?”

“Well I told her how some of the Avengers have movies, right? Tony, Thor, you even had one, but it was a different actor? Long story. Anyway, she said something about how they never give the women a film.”

“But that’s what this one is, you’re saying?” He scratched his head, taking in the concept.

“I mean, it’s _not,_ because this is way too meta for the MCU. But it wouldn’t hurt to start prepping for some kind of big set battle in the next few weeks.”

She thought about not seeing Draw in the cockpit before the plane crashed, but the strange compulsion stopped her from mentioning him.

“Bruce, there were videos of more than just me, at that base you found me at, right?” she said, a pain pressing at her temple. He nodded. “Did you watch them? Any word on how long that one guy could, what did Tony call it? Scoop out a person’s brain and replace it--” She broke off, leaning over. The retaliatory pain from the compulsion was excruciating.

“I don’t remember. Want me to look?”

She got out a bit of a nod before grabbing his glass of water and chugging it.

“Is there anything--”

“No, not really. There’s that meeting in the morning, the debrief. I’ll explain more then,” she reassured him.

Bruce nodded, coming over to hug her before he left. It was probably the Xanax, but she appreciated it all the same.

8888888888

It helped that Tony showed up at the early-morning meeting wearing sunglasses.

It didn’t help much, though.

He came in late. Evie had a folder of key points for what had happened to her so she wouldn’t forget anything, and she pulled it up to cover her face the second he walked in. What she wanted to do instead was run over and… and not have him reject her. She couldn’t even picture it, as if the enormity of what had happened to rip their connection apart didn’t even allow for that visualization anymore. Her heart actually physically hurt to think about it.

By the time she was done with her presentation, a lot of that pain had been soothed by the salve of her teammates’ reactions. Evie didn’t go into the rescue scene specifically, partly because Lt. Colonel Rhodes was ready to speak when she was done. The other reason was that her compulsion was incredibly painful. After Bruce had left the night before, Evie had tried to write out what happened, and she’d come up with a workaround, but it would take time. It involved JARVIS, but because of the compulsion, she’d had to essentially trick the AI into thinking it was a secret, something for Bruce, a thanks for the blanket fort.

Evie didn’t know how smart Draw’s mental handiwork was, but she was grateful that it didn’t extend to thoughts. She’d asked the AI not to guess at her plan in her presence, and her attitude at the time had been specially calculated to be joking, secretive, _joyful,_ as best she could manage. Her goal was for JARVIS to figure it out and take the information to Nat, Steve, Fury-- _someone._

“All right, I’ll let Colonel Rhodes take over from there, but if you’ll forgive me, I’m working on something with JARVIS.” This was the most she could do to try to get her teammates to realize what was going on. 

She smiled nervously at the assembled group, then took out a blank sheet of paper and wrote a giant **P** on it. The night before, when she’d realized what was going on, she’d started with the **C** and then, after setting an alarm, had written the **O** before heading back to bed. First thing in the morning, Evie had written a **M** , and each time she did so, she asked JARVIS to take notice. With luck, he’d soon extrapolate the word, and tell someone. Though it would take the better part of a day, that was better than having to come up with a new plan because she’d rushed it by writing them all out too close to each other.

“Working with JARVIS,” Tony said, each word coming out as if they were part of a particularly keen betrayal.

“Tony,” Steve said warningly. Evie looked up and saw that Fury and Rhodes were deep in conversation at the door, so there wasn’t a chance the Director would step in.

“All this lying to the press --for _days_ don’t forget-- would have been alleviated if she hadn’t ‘worked with JARVIS’ when she ran in the first place, Steve, so don’t lecture me on my _tone,”_ Tony snapped.

Evie stood up and gathered her things, including the **P** page. “It’s obvious my presence is going to be a problem. Since I was there for the rescue, I’m sure I don’t actually need to stick around for--”

“Sit _down,_ Hyacinth,” Tony said.

She didn’t have time to argue, because Rhodes started speaking right after that. Even without being able to see his eyes, though, Evie could see that Tony was furious with her. It was gut wrenching. She could hear so much derision in his tone, but overlaid on that were the times she’d heard that name, _his_ name for her, in such a loving and gentle voice, on his part.

Every time he said it with anger, the lovely times and her current reality were further separated.

Evie sat, studiously not looking in his direction, not that she’d be able to see much of his expression with his eyes buried in the large, dark sunglasses he wore. She wallowed in her frustration and heartbreak during Rhodes’ presentation, perversely grateful that it had been traumatic, so she could appear to be affected by that, and not necessarily listening. When he was done, Fury asked her to stay back as the rest of the Avengers filed out, offering smiles and encouragement as they did so.

Finally it was just Tony, Fury, and Evie in the room. Fury turned to leave.

“Wait--”

“Bear with me, Adams,” Fury said with a world-weary sigh. Evie stared at him for a few seconds, speechless, before picking up her things again and starting for the door.

“I’m restricting your access to JARVIS,” Tony said as she reached for the knob.

If he did that, her plans to explain her compulsion were in jeopardy. She turned back around and walked up to the seat Fury had vacated, putting everything down, but not sitting.

“How restricted?” she asked, trying not to betray how afraid she was.

Tony’s head jerked as he answered, in that way he had when he was full of snark or anger. “Very.”

“Tony, how restricted?” Evie was feeling lightheaded. Draw was out there, he was a threat, and Bruce had shown her footage of the reporters trying to get in the building. He could be among them, right now, as they spoke.

“Simple answers, no analysis. Weather, time, security only. You want to pass along a message, log into your also restricted computer. No more access to SHIELD files,” he said, feigning a bored voice. He looked up at her, insolence and fury painted across every muscle movement.

“Analysis,” she murmured, closing her eyes in pain.

“That includes the kind of warning that meant you got out of the building before I locked it down, in case you’re curious,” Tony said.

“Are you more angry that you couldn’t control me, or because I was right?” Evie asked, walking over to stand a few feet away from where he was sitting.

Never one to be cowed, Tony reclined in his chair, the very picture of an angry ruler. “In what way were you right?”

“I said that when you realized you were wrong, it wasn’t going to be--”

“So, I was wrong. So were you,” Tony broke in, his tone full of resentment. “You took advantage of--”

“I pushed you away so much you called it ‘artificial distance!’” she protested, but he’d never stopped talking.

“--the things you knew to create a rapport that never would have happened if you had told the truth from the very beginning!” Tony’s voice had risen in volume as he spoke so that he was practically shouting at her by the end of it.

“Is that what you think?” Evie asked, careful to keep her tone as calm as she could. She’d done the same with her mother, during her rages. Nothing made a person feel more foolish than to be the only person shouting. It was probably not going to work with Tony, but she wanted every advantage she could get. “You don’t think watching you hurt yourself, touching you to heal those wounds, being a part of the Avengers, could have created that rapport?”

“I trusted you,” Tony said in a voice begging for more air. He went on, powering through it, the words spoken with periodic, painful emphasis. “But you clearly did _not_ trust me. You walked around for _months_ carrying around a private, intimate knowledge of my life. If you had said something at the beginning, that would be one thing, but how, _how_ am I supposed to know what influenced the decisions you took, whether the choices you made are based on _that_ knowledge, or on what I willingly shared with you?”

“I didn’t see it that way!” she said, utterly shocked.

“Of course you didn’t! They weren’t _your_ secrets!”

“But you guys had my secrets, the tapes, the HYDRA tapes!” Evie protested, her calm voice forgotten. She hated that she could feel tears pressing their weight against her eyes. It had never occurred to her that Tony would feel _that_ betrayed, in _that_ way. She shook her head, and a tear flew free. “You knew things about me that I had no idea about!”

“You _chose_ not to know. It was different.”

“You’re a public figure!” she whispered, still shaken, disbelieving his version of events.

Tony stood and hissed, _“Yinsen_ wasn’t public!” He turned and walked away from her, spinning the chairs as he passed them.

“So you’re angry because I saw _more_ than the public did. _More_ heroism, _more_ heart, _more_ drive and determination,” Evie realized aloud. This gave her the courage to stalk after him, strengthening her voice from the horrified whisper of seconds before. “You think I stole that from you, don’t you? The knowledge of what an amazing person, what an actual hero you are. You don’t give that away easily, not even to teammates. But I cheated. I already knew. And when you figured out that I had a high opinion of you, you decided it couldn’t possibly be because of who you really are, it had to be a pre-existing relationship!”

Tony shoved the chair from the head of the table into the wall. It bounced off with a loud thump. Evie wasn’t cowed, and she wasn’t finished, either.

“You are soooo used to being the one who gives permission, aren’t you?” she said. “Seems like it’s beyond your famously astonishing imagination that someone could fall in love with the person you are _right now_ without insider information! Well guess what? It happened! I came into this building with a bit of a crush on Iron Man, sure. That’s pretty common across both universes. But I left the tower with my whole heart on the line, and the only difference between those two states of being was time spent with _you.”_

“Get out,” Tony said in a fierce, grating voice.

“Tony--” 

He spun around and aimed his half-gauntlet at her, just as he had in the elevator, all those months before. This time, she couldn’t see his eyes, hidden as they were behind his sunglasses. This time, she could _choose_ to leave, she wasn’t trapped in the room with him.

But Evie didn’t want to give up. She needed another solution to the standoff.

Tony’s hand shook, his lips were downturned, and he once again didn’t trust her.

Suddenly, Evie knew what she could do, to help the team as well as herself. She gathered up her courage, closed her eyes, and screamed.

“JARVIS, I’M COMPE--!”

She barely got the first syllable of the word out before the embedded power in her head exploded in all directions. It drove her to her knees, still screaming, but now all that came out was nonsense and apologies to herself for the stupidity of what she’d just done. Then, mercifully, she passed out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can I just squeal a little bit about how lovely the formatting turned out to have Civil Dawn and Civil Twilight mirror each other so well at the ends??????


	14. Nautical Twilight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony didn't do what Fury asked and so he and Evie are in a predicament. Then, the whole tower is in a predicament, and the two of them have to work together to get out of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Penultimate chapter, and one of my favorites I've ever written (the next one is also up there)! I hope you enjoy. I got a review over in FFN saying that Tony's anger and lashing out ruined the story for them, but the thing is, these people, they're not perfect. The fall makes the rescue all the sweeter, IMO.

### Chapter Fourteen: Nautical Twilight

Evie woke in complete darkness. It was frightening, but she’d had to use Bruce’s meditation tools in the cave multiple times, so she started deep breathing almost by instinct. As she lay there, her eyes open but seeing nothing, she started to become accustomed to the sounds of the room. There was a rhythmic, barely audible tapping sound that she focused on, trying to identify it. Just as she thought maybe she’d figured out that it sounded like one of the metal pens from the meeting room, it stopped.

Then, she heard the sounds of someone getting up, then footsteps, and so she called out, “Bruce?” Evie’s hand flew to her throat, which hurt, probably from all the yelling she’d done.

“Not Bruce,” Tony said. She looked in the direction of the voice, and saw something swing out of the way, revealing the ARC reactor he was wearing on his chest.

 _“Why_ not Bruce?” Evie asked quietly.

Tony came marginally closer, and Evie sat up. She was wearing the same clothes she’d worn to the meeting. It was a knit cardigan over a knee-length, flowy red dress, and she scrambled to make sure she was decent, even in the dim light.

“I may have miscalculated,” Tony sighed. “Fury wanted me to follow an order he gave and I… didn’t.”

“What order?” Evie asked, getting up. Wherever they were, the ceiling was very high, too high for her to see with just the glow from his chest. She walked closer to him. “Why are you _still_ wearing those sunglasses? It’s nearly pitch dark!”

Tony pulled them off, leaning in. Even in the half light, she could see he had a spectacular black eye.

“Bruce did that?” She didn’t know whether she ought to look proud, but she _felt_ proud. “How many days in? And, what order did Fury give?”

Tony gingerly touched the skin on the outer boundary of the injury and said, “Three. And, to fix it. Fix this. Fix _us,”_ Tony said wryly, his hand gesturing between the two of them.

Evie started walking backwards. “So Fury ordered you, _just_ you, to, what? Make nice? And when you didn’t…”

“He decided to lock us up in Bruce’s calm down room, yes.” Tony tucked his sunglasses into his suit coat and put both hands in his pockets.

“What qualifies as fixed?” Evie asked, walking away from Tony to find the far wall. When she got there, she saw that it was soft in comparison to the floor.

“Amicable. Friendly, even.” She looked over in his direction, but couldn’t see the expression on his face. His tone of voice was dry, just on the edge of sarcastic. Given the fight that had prompted her to scream out against her compulsion, Evie didn’t know what to think.

“So can I just walk over there and shake hands, or what?” she asked, reaching down and taking her heels off. Evie tucked her shoes onto the fingers of her left hand and started walking them back to the cot she’d woken up on. “Who do we have to impress?”

“JARVIS.”

Evie dropped the shoes onto the cot. “You’re kidding.”

“I wish.”

“Well, JARVIS, what do we need to do?” Evie said, then she gasped in a comically loud way and added, “But wait! I can’t talk to JARVIS anymore. You’ll have to do it, I guess.”

“See, that? That’s not amicable,” Tony said. He didn’t sound upset, but he definitely didn’t sound happy, either. “And, I can’t. That’s the thing. This is the Rec Room. It’s designed for the Hulk. There isn’t anything in here, we’re not even in control of when the lights are on. It’s not quite sunrise yet.”

“And what about what I did before I passed out?” Evie asked, wincing at the way her head started to throb even with that oblique phrasing. Tony’s expression shuttered. The need to warn Tony and the others about the threat Draw posed warred with her desire to avoid the pain he’d embedded in her mind. It threatened to erupt and stab her with agony again, if she talked about the compulsion again.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said, but he nodded conspiratorially. “Maybe JARVIS caught something?” Tony added, his voice studiously casual. She wished she could trust that he was trying to convey something more than actual indifference, but after the argument in the meeting room, Evie wasn’t entirely sure she wasn’t reading too much into it. After all, she was trapped in yet another dark, underground space, as if her previous captivity had just been a desert vacation.

Evie wished she could go look up the stupidest of Samuel L. Jackson’s dialogue in Snakes on a Plane and use some sort of advanced Stark AI tech to deepfake Fury into sounding like he was saying it. _That_ might make her feel better.

She said, “So if they’ve got JARVIS monitoring us, they don’t have to worry about how long it takes, because he doesn’t get tired. So no humans are paying attention to us at all right now.”

“Yep.”

“When the odds are that stacked against me, I usually don’t play.” Evie grabbed the edge of the cot and started dragging it toward the curved wall.

“What does that mean, exactly?” Tony asked.

“Forty-eight hours ago I spent the night prying apart a RFID tracker with bloody fingers so I could attach it to the battery I stole from my kidnappers. That was after I was shackled to a wall in a cave for over a week, except when I was paraded in front of various buyers who wanted me as a pet healer!” Evie said, trying to keep her voice even. “I’m finally back home, and Nick _Fucking_ Fury thinks he can punish me for arguing with the very person I left the tower to get away from by locking me in another dark, underground space with him? Yeah, _fuck_ that and fuck him.” Feeling the wall of the room against her back, Evie let go and walked around to push the cot, instead. She’d very nearly added ‘and fuck you’ to the last line, but her voice would have wavered and diminished the impact. He wasn’t the one she was the most upset at, anyway.

She stood still next to the cot and drew in a few deep, gulping breaths, trying to calm down. Tony hadn’t said a thing, and she would be damned if she was going to look over to see his reaction. If he was hurt, she’d be wrecked. If he was unphased… she’d be wrecked.

Evie dug her shoes out of the middle of the cot, threw them on the floor, and climbed in facing the wall. 

“JARVIS, the next letter in the sequence is **E** ,” she said, just loudly enough for the AI to hear, just in case Tony was wrong. Then, Evie pulled the blanket up as far as she could without making it hard to suck in the breaths to sustain her silent, miserable tears.

8888888888

Evie drifted in and out of sleep, her dreams dark and frightening. At one point, she could hear Tony arguing with someone.

“--didn’t think this through. It’s not going to work, and all you’re doing is re-traumatizing her. When I got out of Afghanistan, I chose to spend time in that lab but if someone had forced me to, I would have raised _hell!”_

She opened her eyes. The blanket had ended up over her head, and she could see that there were lights on, finally. It took Evie a little while to roll over and get up. When she was finally standing beside the cot, she saw that Tony was near the door panel, both hands pressed against parallel sections. He seemed to be methodically checking the wall for something.

Tony didn’t turn around, but she hadn’t been quiet in getting up, so she concluded that he was ignoring her. She started trying to fold the enormous blanket (Hulk sized, she guessed, but picturing Bruce’s alter-ego stuck in the room and covered with that blanket made Evie feel some kind of way) but soon gave up. It was one of those space blankets that was slippery as all get-out.

“Ha!” Tony said. He pulled something out of his pocket and started cutting at the thick, rubbery coating on the wall. After a minute, he stood back and looked down at the tool he was using.

Evie picked up her heels. They were covered with thick-cut metal leaves that twined around the stiletto and then wound over the red satin to meet in sharp points at the front, over her toes.

“Try these?” she said, holding them out.

“Stiletto won’t be strong enough,” Tony said, barely glancing over.

“Did you _look_ at them?” she asked, irritated.

Tony turned, and Evie tried not to react to the instant jolt of attraction she felt. He was dishevelled, his hair rumpled, suit jacket off, burgundy shirt unbuttoned to reveal a black tank top with the ARC reactor affixed to it. He took the shoes, then nodded.

“They’ll get destroyed,” he cautioned.

“It was your money anyway.”

Tony’s smile cemented the warm spread of desire inside her.

“So, are you going to hotwire the door? Won’t JARVIS see that?” Evie asked, walking over to where he’d crammed his black socks in the tiny gap that indicated the door panel.

“That’s the beauty of it,” Tony said, tearing off a leaf from one shoe. “Only way to stop me is to knock me out, and that just makes this whole process take longer.”

“The process of reconciliation.”

There was a ripping sound. Tony tossed the leaf down beside him with a ping of metal, grunting as he hauled the padding from the wall. Behind it was a thin wire frame and a circuit board.

“And Pepper told me I should outsource the design for this,” Tony said smugly.

“Do you just naturally assume you’re going to have to escape from any room in this place?”

“Yes.” He massaged one hand with the other, wincing. “Bigger problem is, this is just for the Hulk-proof door panel. The door on the other side of it has its controls on that side of the steel frame.”

“So how do we get out?”

Tony leaned back and pointed at the ceiling. “Up there.”

Evie tried to see what he was pointing at, but the ceiling in the Rec Room was at least four times as high as a regular room. The squares all looked the same. He came over and stood behind her, putting his hands on her shoulders to adjust her stance so she was facing the right way. Then, he put his head near hers and pointed again, so she could follow his gaze as closely as possible.

“See how the channel between the soft wall sections is deep, above the door panel? It’s a track that slides up. To prevent it from getting ruined if we have to wrestle the Hulk in here, it’s designed to go _all the way_ up.” Tony’s arm lifted to show her what he meant. “At the top, the ceiling is breakaway, in case he ends up shoving it as hard as he can. There’s an access door so someone can repair the damage.”

“How hard does it need to hit, to detach for us?” she asked, hyper aware of how close he was.

Tony chuckled, and Evie closed her eyes, her face heating up along with the rest of her. “That’s what this is for,” he said, his hand brushing against her back as he searched in his pocket for something. 

She didn’t know why he wasn’t stepping away from her, but she didn’t want him to. Tony transferred the item between hands and held it up. It was one of his Iron Man tools, a bracelet this time. He slipped it on, then shot his hand out in a powerful movement. The bracelet opened, sliding up to fold out a repulsor into his palm along with various other stabilizing elements, to encase the meat of his hand. 

“It’s not enough to push the door up, especially not if we need to be _on_ it when it’s moving,” Tony said. “But it should pop the ceiling panel out of its housing with no problem.”

Evie turned her head toward his. “Yeah, no problem, if you skip over the part where two grown adults have to ride that door panel up without our weight dragging it back, or falling off!”

He shrugged in that supremely confident way he had. “One thing at a time.” From one second to another, Tony’s demeanor changed from cocky to distracted, his gaze shifting from her eyes to her lips. He held his eyes locked onto her as he moved his body around so he was in front of, rather than beside her.

“There’s one thing we might be able to do that could persuade JARVIS,” he murmured, his expression serious, one eyebrow lifting.

Evie was surrounded by him, felt the pull of what he was saying, and she lifted her hand and placed it right on the ARC reactor. Tony rested one warm hand on her hip. The thin fabric of her red dress made it feel like he was touching her bare skin.

Then, Evie shoved, as hard as she could. Mostly, she shoved herself backwards, because Tony braced himself with one leg as soon as he felt her initial push.

“You want it,” he said as she stalked away from him toward her cot.

“Of course I do. It’s natural to want that with someone you love,” Evie said without turning around. “But it’s natural to want that from someone you’re simply attracted to, too, and I’m interested in one but not the other.” Evie took off her cardigan and started to examine the weave, wondering if she could unravel it to serve as rope for his plan. Anything to get her mind off of wanting to walk back over and kiss him.

“I don’t recall a questionnaire last time!” he tossed at her.

“You thought I was your _wife_. Do people only marry for lust instead of love in this universe?”

There was a clanging sound, and Tony cried out. When Evie looked up, she saw he was clutching his hand, which was dripping blood. Thrown to the side was the grate which had covered the circuit board. She assumed he’d grabbed it roughly in anger, and cut himself.

Evie put down the sweater and walked over, but Tony held his injured hand up and away from her.

“You can’t work on that circuit board bleeding like that, and I can’t work on it at all! Let me see,” she said.

Angry Tony was sexy in a new way for Evie, and she felt the desire that their argument had chased away come flooding back. She kept walking forward and he kept backing up until he was against the wall.

“Ask me to heal it,” she said, standing an inch away but not touching him. Tony’s chest was heaving with the huge breaths he was taking, and his brown eyes were fixed on hers, furious but also vulnerable. Slowly, he lowered his hand, but didn’t offer it to her. Instead, he stretched out one bloody finger and drew a T on the bare skin of her chest, above the neckline of her dress. Then, with an insolent smile, Tony leaned down and kissed her.

Time dilation warred with sensation, as Evie shoved away the messages her body was trying to send about healing, not just in his hand but around his eye as well. The net effect was an enhanced but not pleasurable experience. His bloody injury screamed to her for help, while his black eye was a mild hum at the back, and underneath it all was her all-consuming desire for him. Even that was thwarted by the fact that he didn’t want her the same way.

Evie wrenched her head back and glared at him. “Healing is a choice, Tony. Just like reconciliation.”

She forced herself to turn and started to walk away as fast as she could.

“Loving _isn’t_ a choice.” Tony said quietly. Evie stopped. “I had no control over it. I had to make sense of it.”

“I’m sorry your heart chose so poorly for you,” she snapped, feeling utterly wretched.

Tony crossed the space between them with a few steps and pulled her close, his front to her back. He spoke with his lips against her ear, passionate and upset. “I take it back. Whatever I said that taught you how to throw up these walls. Your face twists into this _misery_ and it’s my fault, and I--”

Evie reached up and curled her hand around the back of his head, sinking her fingers into his hair, stroking him probably a bit too hard. The contact brought an ache with it, a need to heal, but other parts of her ached too, and the dichotomy was just on the right side of painful. Tony groaned, and then his lips were on her neck and she wanted him so badly she didn’t care what that said about her or their relationship. 

His hand had been rough at her waist, and now Tony slid it across her stomach to grab a greedy handful of her dress, his fingertips digging into her hip. He was holding his injured hand away from her, but suddenly he spun her around with the hand on her hip.

“I need you to heal me because if you don’t I’m going to paint my name on every inch of you,” Tony gritted out, his eyes glued to the T he’d drawn on her chest. “I’m asking.”

Evie reached for his hand, pulling it against her cheek, blood and all. She welcomed the flood of energy and information, pouring her soul and sincerity into the action of healing the cut on his hand. The metal had been sharp, and the process was straightforward, but she could still feel her hair lifting into chaotic swirls around her head, just as her skirt rippled and swayed with the energy she was expelling. She’d intended to leave the eye, but Evie wanted to feel his touch without the tickle at the back of her mind that demanded she fix everything properly. When she was finished, Tony snatched his hand away and immediately picked her up to straddle him, his now unblemished face buried in her neck.

Tony started back toward the wall, and Evie remembered that they were padded. “God, Tony,” she groaned, touching him everywhere she could reach-- in his hair, along his arms, his back. Just like she hoped he would, Tony drove her into the wall, his hips pushing against hers with brutal, delicious force. She tugged at his shirt, and he stripped it off. Tony kissed her then, one hand slipping under her dress, unerringly gliding past her panties to find out exactly how much she wanted him.

“Fuck, yes,” Tony said. “I’m going to have to fight with you more often if this is what happens.” 

His eyes slipped shut as she rolled her hips against him, biting her lip against smiling and therefore rewarding his outrageous comment. He stepped back just far enough for gravity to pull her down, using one hand on either hip to slide her panties off. Evie reached for his belt, and Tony leaned one hand on the wall, staring at her face as she looked at what she was doing. With his other hand, he started stroking her.

“So wet,” he whispered.

“So distracted,” Evie retorted. His belt was some sort of ridiculous self-fastening contraption that would lock back up as soon as the two ends neared each other. She could barely think straight, and after the third time, she buried her face in his chest. Tony’s stroking didn’t break rhythm at all as he chuckled and reached down with his free hand, flicking the belt apart and pulling it out of his belt loops. Instead of finishing by unfastening his pants, Tony replaced that hand on the wall.

“You should be illegal,” Evie complained, kissing his chest and resuming her task. Tony rewarded her for completing it by switching up his hand movements, adding a twist that had her clutching him and gasping. The next second, her orgasm hit, powerful and satisfying.

To her surprise, Evie’s time dilation stuttered to life, and she realized she’d dug her fingernails into Tony’s bare arms. It didn’t take long to heal, but he was full-on laughing when she came out of it.

“Now _that’s_ a unique experience,” he said smugly.

“Tony?” Evie said, her tone dangerous.

“Yes, Hyacinth?”

She gathered up all of her courage. “Fuck me.”

Tony reacted just as she hoped he would, his gaze darkening as he reached for her. Seconds later, he was sliding in at the same time her back hit the wall for the second time that day. It was rough, and his fingers tangled painfully in her hair as he kissed her.

“I wanted this every day you were gone,” Tony said between possessive kisses.

“Not right away,” she objected when he kissed his way down her neck, her breath hitching with the snap of his hips.

“Every fucking day,” he corrected, lifting his head to pin her with his gaze. The fierce truth she saw there made her dizzy. Evie touched his cheek, opposite the side with the black eye, and he turned his head to kiss her palm. Then, he grinned at her, naughty and impish. “I knew it,” he whispered. “You’re mine.”

Evie crashed her lips into his before he finished the word, and they fought, kiss for kiss, until Tony’s arm tightened around her and his hips stuttered as he came. His deep groan pulled a moan from her in response. Evie slid down the wall again, her arms going around him. Tony braced both hands against the wall, panting.

Despite herself, Evie moved her head to look at the door area, wondering if JARVIS would consider _that_ enough of a reconciliation to let them out.

“Did you seriously just _check the door?”_ Tony said, amused.

“Wouldn’t you?”

He opened his mouth to respond, but an alarm started blaring in multiple places in the tower. It wasn’t going off inside their space, but she could hear it coming from the other side of the door and from two different speakers in the rooms above them.

Immediately, Tony was all business, holding still to listen to the cadence of the alarm. His expression told her it was something very, very bad.

“Okay, it’s time to go,” he said, meeting her eyes with a look of wry concern. The two of them hurried to put themselves back together. A bit of discomfort wasn’t worth worrying about in an emergency.

“Pull off one of those leaves for me, maybe I can use the blanket in strips as rope so we can ride that door,” Evie said.

“Good idea,” he said. But it’s got basically no vertical strength, so we’ll need something else to lash to the center of the door.” He looked critically at her skirt. “Too stretchy.” Then, Tony’s eyes went wide. Instead of explaining, he turned and walked straight over to the door, carrying his dress shirt. He held the sleeve against the floor and pushed the shirt flat vertically, measuring how much material they would need. Tony shook his head.

Evie decided it wasn’t helpful to watch him. She turned to her own task, and after grabbing Tony’s discarded leaf, she started making a series of cuts on the emergency blanket, creating a ridiculously long strip. Then, using her knowledge of knots from various craft projects over the years, Evie started reinforcing the blanket so that it had better support for use as a rope. It wouldn’t need to last too long, she hoped.

A quick glance over at Tony showed her that he was kneeling next to the door, fiddling with the exposed wires of his repulsor gauntlet.

Evie stood on one end of the tied blanket and tugged on it as hard as she could to test its stretch. The spaces between her knots increased alarmingly. She sat down on the cot and, with a sigh, started to take apart her cardigan.

“JARVIS, now would be a really good time!” Tony shouted, standing up and donning the gauntlet. He started muttering calculations under his breath, every so often saying one louder as he tore at the padding on the door they were going to need to ride on. Finally, he backed up, shot a grin over his shoulder at her, and fired.

“What--”

“Anchor hole,” Tony said, picking up a chunk of removed padding and using it to knock away embers from where the repulsor struck. There was a hand-shaped hole in the door. “What are you up to?” he added.

Evie gestured to the knotted rope she’d made. “Trying to unravel this so I can get that to hold in a way that doesn’t make me convinced it’ll give way about twenty feet up.”

“Don’t think there’s time,” he said. “How about just for the part that ties onto the anchor I just made?”

Together, they padded the hole with ripped parts of the wall so it wouldn’t slice through their rope, and then triple tied the makeshift rope by its middle to the door. Tony looked satisfied with that, but when it came to tying the free ends back into the anchor so they could stand on the loop, he struggled.

Finally, Tony turned to her. “I’m going to need your bra.”

“Well, that’s just ironic, at this point,” Evie said, laughing.

8888888888

There were many things about Evie’s new life that pushed the boundary of the believable, but riding a huge sliding door under boosted-up ARC Reactor power was one of the strangest.

Tony had realized the mechanism to lift the door wouldn’t bear their weight. He told her it would likely burn out if he’d intended to use it for more than two people, but he decided to use the detachable ARC reactor as a power boost. Instead of using her unraveled cardigan to reinforce the blanket rope for both of them to ride at once, they tied a series of knots in the yarn to make a cocoon for his ARC reactor so that they’d be able to pull it up to bring it with them.

They’d need to. There had been two separate _explosions_ that had gone off in the tower, and Evie was pretty sure she could hear the Hulk.

The plan went as well as could be expected. Tony went first, blasting the ceiling out of the way exactly as he’d hoped to, and after he climbed into the repair space, Evie had to swap the wires to reverse the door back down. The most harrowing part for her was making sure she had enough slack for the ARC reactor’s cradle so that she could tug it up once she was safe.

Evie was five feet from the ceiling when the unthinkable happened.

The outer door mechanism started to move.

“Give me your hand and yank it, I’ll pull you up,” Tony hissed. She reached up, and as soon as Tony had a good grip on her, Evie pulled on the yarn cradle for the ARC Reactor, kicking her feet free of the harness so it wouldn’t drag her back down when she dislodged the wiring in the process.

Immediately, Evie realized their mistake. Without the ability to use both hands to pull up the ARC Reactor, it would stay relatively reachable for whoever was about to walk through the door.

“Hold tight!” she said to Tony, and started tangling her foot in the yarn, bending her knee to lift the cord up for the hand she had free. Her elbow ached from the torque of his grip combined with her movements, but she desperately watched the twirling yarn cradle and its precious cargo come closer. Finally she was close enough to scramble onto the ledge, and Tony leaned over to play the yarn up, hand after hand, until he was able to pull it free and attach it to his chest.

Only after that did Evie look down, and what she saw was chilling.

It was Draw, and he was looking right at her. He threw his hands out beside him and shrugged with predatory amusement, showing her that he had no weapons.

“We’ve gotta go,” she said, feeling terribly exposed. How far were his compulsion or illusions effective?

“Not just yet,” Tony said, swiftly putting the gauntlet on, aiming it down, and firing. The blast knocked Tony back, and Evie desperately grabbed him in case he lost his balance. Only after she was sure he was safe did she look down.

Draw was dead. The modification Tony had made to the gauntlet had been to narrow its beam and focus it, to create a hole in the sliding door. In her kidnapper, the beam created a hole straight through his body, in the same place where Tony’s ARC reactor had once been embedded in his own chest.

Tony stood up and looked down, a grim satisfaction on his face. Then, he looked over at Evie and then up at the ceiling. “Really?” he said, incredulous. “We just killed the bad guy! Come _on,_ JARVIS!”

“Maybe it’s because we’re not done,” she said, nodding at the alarms which were even more audible from their current position. He nodded, pushing up the access panel. Tony climbed out first, helping her through. The floor was a complete mess, with glass, twisted metal, and intermittent bloodstains. The place looked far worse than she’d been expecting.

“What--” Tony gasped, picking up a badge from the floor.

“Hulk?” Evie guessed.

“Maybe,” he said, handing over the badge. It was Bruce’s.

They headed up the stairs, making for the residence area. Tony pulled ahead, in better shape than Evie was, and likely driven by pure fear, or fury. When she finally got there, she saw Thor kneeling beside a prone figure, with Tony standing beside him, frowning.

“Clint!” Evie screamed, but when she started running for him, Tony caught her arm.

“It’s not real. It can’t be,” he said flatly. Tony looked up around at the room, letting go of her to walk over to a wall. He pulled an arrow out of it and showed it to her, sliding his fist across it, opening his hand to let it fall. “No residue from hitting anything. He doesn’t miss.”

“So, what, these visions we’re seeing aren’t connected to his brain? He implants them, fire and forget? How do you even defeat that? Are we sure he’s dead?” she asked, terrified at the idea that she could carry around some dead remnant of her captor for the rest of her life. “How come we can see them?”

“Pretty sure he’s dead,” Tony said, but he walked over to the wall, pushing a corner of the decorative element to reveal a console. “We’ve been working on a counter, prompted by your outburst--” He tapped vigorously, frowning before letting out a ‘Ha.’ “All right, surveillance shows his body in the Rec Room, but just in case, I’ve got the door shut again. Don’t think his shit works on computer minds.”

His fingers flew across the keyboard again, until finally he let out a pleased sound, followed immediately by a grunt of frustration. Tony spun around.

“Thor, buddy, I need you to say exactly these words, ‘JARVIS, enable project Laeknir.’” 

“Yes, a healer, we need a healer. Evie, why have you not--”

“It won’t do anything. He’s not real,” Tony said. “JARVIS is still set to ignore my commands, as per Fury. We’d been working on a frequency to try to lift the mind control shit, but of course I can’t get it to _activate,_ because all I have access to is base files, no commands.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair. “We killed the bad guy, now all that’s left is _us.”_ Tony widened his eyes and grimaced.

Evie walked over to Thor. “I can’t heal him until you ask JARVIS for help,” she said sadly.

“I do not--” Thor said.

Far below, there was a rumble and a roar.

“Hulk,” Tony said. “Thor--”

“JARVIS, enable project Laeknir,” Thor said, repeating each word except the last one as if it were a confusing, foreign concept.

Immediately, a whirring, variable sound came across the speakers installed all across the tower. The strange lock installed in Evie’s consciousness started to weaken, and then finally collapsed.

All around her, the room started to change. Broken glass melted into the floor, thrown furniture flew apart, the pieces reconstituting themselves into their original shapes. Most importantly, Clint’s body started rising up, and the higher it got, the less distinct looked, until finally it disappeared.

“It was all an illusion!” Thor said, sounding joyous. He spun around, clearly ready to share the moment of victory with them, but his face fell. “The two of you are still in tatters. The illusion holds.”

Evie looked down at herself. She knew there was probably blood on her face from Tony’s injury, she was without shoes, and her dress was smudged and rumpled after their ordeal. Tony looked fantastic-- he was in his tightly tailored dress pants (sans belt!) and a black tank top, his ARC Reactor once again fastened to the center of it. His arms were dirty, as was his face.

“Nope, this is just what I look like right now, but thanks, Thor,” she laughed.

“Is that a T on your chest, written in blood? It becomes you, Lady Evie,” Thor said, his eyes bulging just a bit. That was when she remembered she wasn’t wearing a bra anymore.

“Yeah, that’s enough of that,” Tony said, taking her hand and starting to drag her through the living space on the way to the residence hallway. “Thor, why don’t you ogle the labs, see if everyone’s all right?”

“What of Hulk?” Thor asked.

“I’m gonna suit up.”

Evie pulled her hand out from his. “I’ll go.” She knew she should be more afraid, but Bruce had talked to her about the Other Guy more than once. About the triggers, things that made Hulk more aggressive, and about the things Bruce thought might calm him down. “There will be injured people, if he’s too scary, I’ll get out of there. But I want to try.”

“Dressed like that? He’ll come up here and throw me off of the tower,” Tony said.

“You don’t think he’ll believe me when I said you had barely anything to do with it?” Evie asked. It was a stretch-- she was disheveled _before_ they rode the door.

Tony’s expression was that of extreme doubt. “You should really see yourself. I kind of want to just lock you in the penthouse until I can work out exactly how I feel about it, but you’ve had your freedom restricted enough, lately.”

“We didn’t really resolve anything, you know,” she said sadly.

He came up to her and used one hand on either side of her face to tuck her wild silver hair behind her ears. “Believe me when I tell you, I want to do that, Hyacinth, it’s just that my tower is falling in around our ears, and your bestie the Hulk is rampaging.” His tone was placating, but also heavily condescending, and she glared at him in as loving a way as possible.

“So what do you want me to do?” she asked.

Tony looked up at the ceiling, an indulgent grin on his face. “I told you, I want to take you up to the penthouse and--”

Evie grabbed both armholes of Tony’s black tank top and hauled him down for a quick, frustrated kiss.

“Go fix your tower, I’ll fix my friend.”

“Yes, _dear,”_ Tony said, looking down the neckline of her dress.

> _=Objective complete.=_

“Fucking _finally!”_ Tony shouted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I realized the other day when editing this to post that I just plumb forgot about birth control/testing when it comes to Tony and Evie. It's not that I don't find that valuable, or appropriate, but I literally forgot. I tried to add it in, but angry sex is not conducive to that, to be honest, so I'm going to just ask you to use your imaginations. Maybe he snooped on her file and saw she has an IUD. Maybe Tony's clean STD test results are unironically posted on a message board in the base of the tower to troll the press. Maybe the conversation happened off camera? Sorry about that.
> 
> PS. yes I'm planning a sequel and yes Nick Fury is on Evie's shit list. There's a post-credits scene after the last chapter and everything


	15. Astronomical Twilight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Evie meets the Hulk for the first time, Thor gives her some relationship advice, and she and Tony demonstrate their compatibility with each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay you earned it. A chapter full of pure fun and tied-up ends, along with a post-credit sequence setting up a planned sequel.
> 
> Not sure yet whether I'll start writing it while I'm writing Exile All the Longer, but we'll have to see. I will unashamedly say that enthusiasm is absolutely bribe currency here, though. If there wasn't such an overwhelmingly positive response to this, my delight and eagerness to continue writing these characters I love so very much wouldn't have been anywhere near as strong.
> 
> So thank you, thank you, thank you. You make this more fun than basically anything else I could be doing, just by telling me you liked it. You're the rock stars, here.

### Chapter Fifteen: Astronomical Twilight

Evie did change her clothes, rationalizing it as a choice that would make soothing the Hulk that much easier, if he even recognized her as someone valuable to him in the first place. Evie regretted not buying the oversized shirt she’d seen online that showed the Hulk and a ‘SMASH’ speech bubble. The graphics featured him stomping on Lord Voldemort. Instead, she grabbed a plain light green one. Its neckline was high enough to prevent anyone seeing the T on her chest in dried blood, but she did wash the blood off of her face. After putting on a pair of sneakers and black leggings, Evie was ready to go find Bruce’s alter ego.

She and Bruce hadn’t talked much about Hulk, mostly because she knew a lot about what happened without having to ask, and he usually would rather not bring it up. When she walked into the communal living space, JARVIS spoke to her for the first time since their imprisonment in the Rec Room.

> _=If you look on the kitchen island, Mr. Stark has left you a comm to stay in contact during your mission.=_

“The Prodigal Son returns!” Evie said, grabbing the small envelope and putting the device on her ear. She was in a hurry, but she did see that there was a heart and a TS with Stark Industries’ characteristic arrow-like symbol through the heart and the letters. She started down the stairs.

> _=If I had been aware that both of you would independently refer to me that way earlier today while you were still confined, I might have simply opened the door and released you.=_

“Your mistake, J,” Evie said. “So, where’s Hulk?” She kept a light hand on the railing as she raced down as safely as she could manage.

> _=On one of the lower levels, thankfully. He was trapped in the stairs for some time, which was the cause of at least one explosion. He kicked one of the locked doors into a glass-walled lab with so much force that it caused some stored canisters of gas to blow up.=_

“That’s actually comforting. Means no one probably left behind pipe bombs or anything.” She stopped on the center step of her current flight. “There aren’t any, right?”

JARVIS’s voice came through her comm, instead of a ceiling speaker.

> _=No pipe bombs that I could detect, either chemically or visually. This next floor is where the Hulk is currently rampaging. There is one injured person by the stairwell door.=_

“Thanks, JARVIS,” Evie said. She pushed the door open slowly. The injured worker was a woman in a lab coat, and there was glass in her hair.

“I messed up both legs. Had a lunch date, and I stupidly kept my heels on when I came back! Had nothing to do with the green guy at all,” the woman groaned.

Evie smiled and reassured her that she would be able to heal the sprain right up. She laid her hand on the woman’s puffy ankle and right away, the time-bent process of repairing the stretched and swollen tissue hit her. The woman had actually broken two toes on her other foot as well. It didn’t take long, but when Evie came out of it, the lab worker looked even more frightened than she had before.

“GREEN.” The Hulk was standing in the ruined doorway of the lab across from the door to the stairs.

“Go on,” Evie said to the lab worker. She stood up and walked between the Hulk and the fleeing woman. “Hey there. We haven’t met yet. I’m Evie.”

“GREEN HAIR,” Hulk said. “GONE.”

Evie realized that was definitely confusing. She didn’t know how cognitively _there_ the Hulk was, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t try.

“I’m a healer. My hair glows when I heal.”

Hulk rushed toward her, and Evie forced herself to stay still, if only because his face had lit up and he was holding out his arm.

“ARM HURT. GLOW GREEN!” Hulk said, kneeling halfway through his advance toward her, so that he ended up kneeling in the hallway in front of her when he finally stopped himself with one huge hand. He gestured for her to come closer. “GREEN HAIR. COME.”

“Oh shit, yeah, just try the not complicated answer, Evie, that won’t end badly!” she muttered to herself as she walked toward the kneeling Hulk. “Here’s the thing. The color is based on how hurt you are, and you seem to heal pretty fast--”

“NOT GREEN? NEED MORE HURT?” Hulk raised his hand high, seeming to be about to smash it down on his other hand.

“No no no no,” Evie said, rushing over. “Let’s, uh. Try, first?” When he nodded, she breathed a sigh of relief and rested her hand on the cut on his hand. It looked like maybe he’d smashed through some glass, and as soon as her healing immersion started, Evie found out she was right. There was actually a lot of glass in a couple wounds, enough that it was possible that he could end up getting his way. Though Hulk had powerful self-healing abilities, Evie knew as a healer and a nurse that wounds couldn’t properly heal with foreign objects embedded in them.

As much as she could, Evie slowed down the process of healing, carefully using the technique she’d learned from healing Villiers to push out each shard of glass. At one point, she felt a solid weight at her back and realized that the Hulk must have reached out with his other hand to steady her. When she was finally done, Evie lifted her hand and looked with trepidation up at his face. He was grinning with sheer delight.

“FRIEND GREEN FOR HULK. GOOD BRUCE FRIEND.”

“Okay, that’s downright adorable,” Tony said from somewhere behind her. He was wearing the Iron Man suit. “We’ve been working on something for him, can you try it? Tell him the sun’s going down.”

The Hulk was frowning at Tony, so Evie went to get up so she could stand in his line of sight again to refocus him onto her.

“NO. STAY,” Hulk said, reaching out his huge arm to block her path.

“Not sure we can stay here, hon. There’s a lot of stuff to clean up, and the sun’s going down.”

Hulk looked thoughtful for a moment before holding his hand out flat, palm up. Evie shot a look over at Tony, and he mimed placing a palm-up hand on the Hulk’s. She positioned her hand as Tony directed. Evie tried to do it as soothingly and gently as possible, and before her eyes, the large being’s eyes closed and he listed to the side. She was worried that striking his head on the wall would wake him up from whatever signal she’d just taken part in, but then he started to shrink and change color. After watching the transformation for a few seconds, Evie slid her free hand under Bruce’s hand, ending with his fully human hand clasped by both of hers. He was asleep, though.

“Great job,” Tony said. “I think we can just move him to his rooms. Thor?”

 _“Have you conquered him then? Which floor?”_ Thor said over the comm.

Tony told him. As they waited, Evie brushed glass away from Bruce’s still form and listened to Tony explain what he and the others had found throughout the tower. It seemed that most of the destruction was an implanted illusion, except for the Hulk damage, and one instance of deliberate sabotage by Draw. Tony left to go supervise volatile lab equipment once Thor showed up, and Evie went with the god to take Bruce to his rooms.

“Have the two of you reconciled?” Thor asked her as soon as they boarded the elevator.

“Maybe? I don’t know. I’m not sure whether he’s just so happy to see me back that it’s obscuring his previous doubts, or if we’re good. And, honestly, it’s nice that I have these amazing healing powers now, but it feels like I’m so far out of his league in every way! He’s gifted, brilliant, a _lion_ of courage, and I’m just this girl who got handed silver hair and powers after she was dragged out of a boring, unworthy life. Colonel Rhodes said he thought Tony came up with the wife theory because he wanted there to be some sort of cosmic fate to our relationship, and I can’t help but agree.” Evie leaned heavily against the elevator wall and sighed. “I can’t really… fix that, though.”

“Is not the fact that you’ve been brought here from a different universe and you love each other enough evidence for ‘cosmic fate?’” Thor asked, his golden brows furrowing. “In truth, this conversation is illuminating. My Jane is a rare woman, with accomplishments that raise her to the pinnacle of her field, but she is still _mortal._ Despite my devotion, I am sure she shares the same doubts you do, at times.”

The elevator door opened, and they walked over to the hallway door. After Evie opened it and they’d walked through with a modicum of bumps for the unconscious scientist, Thor spoke again.

“I do not believe I would love Jane less were she to lose her talent for science. I would mourn that with her, of course, but I think it was just the branch of the path that led us to find one another.” Thor paused to ask JARVIS for permission to open Bruce’s door, which was granted. “It was a convoluted path, just like yours and Stark’s. I think he may discover the same thing that I did: it is not impossible to love someone you never expected to, but it’s impossible to love them fully, if you’re focused on such expectations.”

Thor turned away from her to walk down the hallway to Bruce’s bedroom, and Evie just stood there staring at the wall, thinking about what he’d said. It was profound, slightly out of her comprehension level, and _sounded_ encouraging. When he walked back into Bruce’s living room area, she walked over and gave Thor a huge hug.

“I think you are most certainly in his league, Lady Evie. You are fiercely loyal, clever, kindhearted, and your power is both beautiful to behold _and_ useful to all. Any mortal man should be honored to fall in love with you.”

“Aww, Thor, thank you,” Evie said, grinning so hard the corners of her mouth hurt. “Jane is a lucky woman.”

“She is. Though, I find it stimulating that she does not seem to be as overwhelmed and honored by my attentions as would an Asgardian woman. It is part of her allure for me, I think,” Thor said thoughtfully, as they left Bruce’s apartment.

“She’s not bowled over by your godliness, you mean? The very fact that she managed to catch your eye?”

“Exactly. You and she are alike in this. You seem as if you view Stark as your equal in some ways, particularly in wit. It is an attractive trait,” Thor said, surprising Evie.

He reached for the door to leave the residential hallway, and Evie laid a hand on the knob to stop him for a second. “Want to know a secret?”

“Always,” Thor said, grinning.

“I’m completely bowled. Astonished, amazed, delighted, intimidated, all of it. I probably always will be. But, I’m _comfortable_ with him in a way that means I don’t always act like you could knock me over with a feather that Tony Stark might like me back.”

“So, you’re saying that Jane may indeed find my attention attractively overwhelming?”

“I bet she does, yes.”

8888888888

Evie spent the rest of the afternoon helping the other Avengers clean up after the one-man attack that Draw had so unexpectedly and almost successfully committed against their tower. Tony was very busy as well, so she didn’t get a chance to see him before she made her way, exhausted, back to her apartment. She walked in and immediately took her shoes off, heading into the kitchenette before she’d even turned the lights on, so she could grab a drink. Since she knew where all of her furniture was, she didn’t say anything to JARVIS about lights, and instead just walked around, planning to collapse onto her couch. Bruce’s pillow fort was still up, but she didn’t have it in her to crawl inside right now. Everything ached.

“Hi,” Tony said, a second before she sat on him.

“Shit, Tony!” Evie squealed. She’d been in the process of opening her bottle of Dr. Pepper, and the jerk of surprise that she made caused the bottle to fizz over.

“Lights, JARVIS, please?” Tony said, his tone deeply amused. “You know, I’m not sure I ever got a deposit from you for the carpets.”

Evie had Dr. Pepper all over her shirt, on her pants, and some was even in her _hair._

“That was the wrong thing to say,” she told him seriously.

“It was? Doesn’t it imply that you _owe_ me for the stains you’ve just inflicted?” Tony asked, gesturing with a haughty hand to the floor, where there was indeed a spreading soda stain on the white carpet.

“It implies that we do not currently have a contract whereby I accept responsibility for the carpets. Or the couch. Or your clothes, for that matter,” Evie said, shaking the bottle like a madwoman before twisting off the lid and tossing the whole thing at him. Then, she ran like hell into her room.

Because it was _Tony,_ who was as fit as Captain America and at least twice as motivated by vindictiveness, she didn’t get the door slammed on him in time to throw the bolt. 

Evie swan-dived onto the bed, and Tony caught her, rolling on top.

“That was sticky, childish, and strangely hot of you,” he told her. His face was wet, and he leaned over and wiped Dr. Pepper residue from his cheeks onto _her_ face, because of course he did.

“Gross,” Evie declared.

“Yeah, well, you deserve it.” Tony rolled off of her onto the bed and pulled off his shirt, revealing that he was still wearing the black tank he’d worn in the Rec Room. “What if you’d shorted this out, hmm?” He tapped his ARC reactor with two fingers.

“Wrong. Not possible, but don’t ask me how I know,” Evie said, biting her lip and watching his face closely.

 _“Wow,”_ Tony said, clearly stunned at her audacity. He lay there on her bed, staring up at her, and she could see the kaleidoscope of feelings he was cycling through, just like she had that day in the fancy cell. “Wow. So, no mystery anymore, then?”

It was a stupendous olive branch, and Tony had offered it to her with specifically loving nonchalance. Evie tried to think of a quip, but she could feel herself rapidly starting to get emotional. Tony could see it too, and after a few seconds, he grabbed her pillow and wiped the rest of his face and hair off with it, like he was motivated to change the subject in the most obnoxious way possible.

Evie’s eyes grew wide, but Tony wasn’t done. He stood, picked up her light blue comforter and started rubbing briskly all over the wet patches on his clothing as if using a towel.

“Damn, I don’t think you can sleep on those,” he said, sounding not at all repentant as he looked at her soda-stained bedclothes. “But, I mean, you’ve got spares, right?”

Evie shook her head.

“Well, if you need a place to stay…”

Tony stuffed his hands in his pockets, probably so he could casually strut toward the door and offer to have her come up to his penthouse, but the next second he pulled his hand out and made a face.

“It squelched, didn’t it? Your pocket?”

“You’re going to have to pay me back somehow, for these pants. I _liked_ these pants,” Tony said, nodding toward the door of her room to signal that it was time to leave. “I once had extremely hot and satisfying sex with a woman in a red dress wearing these pants.”

“The woman was wearing a dress _and_ your pants?” Evie asked, in mock confusion.

Tony spun around and laid a hand on either side of her face to kiss her in retaliation, but Evie squirmed away and scrubbed at her cheek with her sleeve.

“Okay, see? This is why we don’t splash sticky liquids on people,” Tony complained.

Evie covered her mouth with her hand and giggled.

“You. Are coming with me. To my bed. Hopefully _our_ bed. From which I do not intend to move for some time,” he finally said, grabbing her hand with a firm grip and stomping toward the front door of her apartment.

“I enthusiastically consent,” Evie murmured.

“You’d better,” he said, but he was grinning.

In the elevator, Evie turned to look at her reflection, and Tony shifted to stand behind her. Their eyes met in the imperfect mirror of the metal, and she smiled when he leaned over and kissed her neck. As she watched him, Tony reached over and pulled the forgotten comm earpiece from where it had rested so comfortably around her ear.

“Funny thing about these. They don’t stop transmitting unless you _tell_ them to-- which, don’t worry, I did. I asked JARVIS to turn yours off when you walked into your apartment, same with mine,” Tony said quietly.

Evie could tell there was something important he was trying to say, but it was lost on her. She started rubbing her eyes, the first words coming out in somewhat of a yawn.

“Tony there’s a reason why I was walking around with the lights off. I’m very tired. Not… must sleep immediately tired, mind you,” she added, enjoying the slow, relieved grin he offered her in response, “But definitely ‘my brain is slow as fuck’ tired. What are you getting at?”

“You had a conversation earlier today. With Thor,” Tony said.

Evie turned around and looked at Tony. He had the most shit-eating, conceited, ‘I won the jackpot’ expression on his face she’d ever seen.

“Oh, my God,” she whispered.

“So do you think you’ll wake up in the middle of the night wondering how you got so lucky? Or will I need to help you set an alarm?” he asked, trying his best for ‘sincere question’ and failing utterly.

“You’re going to be insufferable _forever,”_ Evie groaned.

“Come on, it’s me. You knew that.”

“I did.”

“JARVIS, could you stop the elevator a half-floor before the penthouse, please?” Tony said.

> _=As it is no doubt in furtherance of some grand romantic gesture, Sir, of course.=_

Tony glared at the ceiling, but then turned to her. “So, one more round of three questions.”

Evie groaned, knowing it made her look like a jerk. “I’m tired! Can I trade on the fact that I absolutely love you and skip it this once?”

“But I’m already doing it in an elevator without an audience, what more do you want?” he protested.

“Here, as a gift to you: JARVIS, you can unlock all of the videos with me, and set the permissions back to the way they were before. Password is Damon Bradley.”

“I _knew_ it!” Tony said. It echoed very loudly in the elevator. “Before you look all freaked out, it was in the note. The one you left for Bruce. It said, ‘Tell him I’m glad he’s not Mr. Wright,’ and I was convinced that was a clue.” 

“It kind of was,” Evie said, uncomfortable. The ‘not real’ thing wasn’t as big of a sore spot as her knowledge of him, but they hadn’t hashed it out yet. Tony didn’t seem upset, though, so she just rubbed her hands along her upper arms and listened.

“So, I had JARVIS go on IMDB and look up every possible character named Wright, and cross-reference it with my own age, figuring it was probably related to the actor who plays me in your universe.” Tony looked at her for confirmation, his eyebrows lifted, and she nodded. “And then we found it.” He shot her a look of deep appreciation. “Please tell me if I get you that red dress you’ll wear it for me?”

“Absolutely.” She’d _always_ wanted to wear that red dress.

“The male lead in that was tragically miscast. I would have _killed_ that role,” Tony said, widening his eyes at her. “Anyway, I watched it.” 

He stopped talking and just looked at her until Evie leaned back against the elevator wall and said, “What?”

“You loved that movie, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“It’s about a romantic lead who chases destiny instead of the person that’s perfect for them, the person who’s right there for the taking, loving them _desperately,”_ Tony said, as if the conclusion wasn’t completely obvious. “The person who didn’t quite tell the truth at first. Evie!” 

He threw out his hands.

 _“You’re_ RDJ. You’re Peter Wright!” Tony said, sounding delighted with his conclusion. His tone that whole time had been building to the name, but the next thing he said was in a simple, matter-of-fact tone that meant more to her than everything else. “And I choose you.” He walked over and slid his hand into hers, twining their fingers together. “JARVIS, go on up,” he said.

“No three questions?” she asked, remembering that it had seemed important.

“They’ll keep,” Tony said, raising their joined hands to his mouth for a kiss. He paused in the act of putting it down, right as the doors opened. “I said I love you, right?” His brows were furrowed.

Evie thought about the easygoing way he’d taken her ill-timed joke about knowing things she shouldn’t, and his excitement about coming up with a parallel between their romance and the one from her password. He hadn’t quite said it, but he’d _said_ it.

“Yeah, you basically said it,” she told him, starting to walk off of the elevator. Tony didn’t move, and she was halted by their joined hands.

“But did I _say_ it?”

She used a joking voice, and she didn’t turn around. “No, but I’m tired, and the elevator is about to--”

“Hyacinth, I love you,” Tony blurted out, gently tugging her hand. She turned slowly to see that he had his ‘game’ face on, serious as all hell. “Because of who you are to me. _This_ me. That thing about being impressed, or honored? Forget that. You’re perfect exactly _because_ you didn’t see me as Tony Stark first. You originally saw me on film, via another man’s performance, a-- a superhero spectacle,” he said, waving around his free hand. “I had to _earn_ the rest of it, flesh out the character, until all you see is me. And I’m the better for it.”

Evie threw her arms around him, overcome. He rubbed his hands along her back, and she tipped up her head to kiss him.

A few minutes later, as they walked off of the elevator, Tony said, “Oscar-worthy speech, you think?”

“You are _unbelievable,”_ Evie said, shaking her head at him.

“You love it,” he said, his brown eyes flashing with amusement and affection.

“I really do.”

  
  


THE END

* * *

### Post-Credits Scene

Lt. Colonel James Rhodes had never been to this part of the tower before. He wasn’t sure Tony even had-- after an elevator switch and two separate biometric doors, he was standing in front of a third door with his hand on a scanner. The dialogue box on the screen above the scanner said, ‘waiting for secondary confirmation scan,’ which he took to mean the palmprint of whoever had summoned him to this meeting.

Rhodes wondered how the first person got in, if everyone else had to have the occupant’s palm scanned to enter.

The screen flashed red, then purple, and Rhodes heard multiple clicks as the door unlocked. It swung outward. He noticed that the hinges were on the inside.

“Colonel Rhodes, have a seat.”

Rhodes allowed himself a small smile. Director Fury, of course.

“I should have realized it was you. All of the super spy shit, of course it’s the super spy. What can I help you with, sir?” It was a risk, the combination of deference and familiarity, but Tony had bitched enough about the man in front of him that Rhodes wanted to signal he wasn’t going to genuflect. He sat down.

“Colonel, I’d like to ask you a few questions about any conversations you might have had with Evangeline Adams.”

He winced. “I’ll tell you upfront, Director: almost all of what we said to each other was about Tony. I kind of saw it as my patriotic duty to try to clear some of their mess up.”

“Think back. Were there any words or phrases that you could give me, something that sounded significant, something that didn’t-- Anything?” Fury’s tone was just on the edge of beseeching, and Rhodes could tell he was agitated. His hands were hovering over a keyboard, and the computer monitor was jammed up close to where Fury was poised to type.

“I’ll think back, sir, but some context might help?”

Fury’s lips twisted. “I’m sure you’ve heard about the circumstances of her arrival here? Her somewhat unconventional knowledge?” Rhodes nodded. “It seems that in her infinite wisdom, Miss Adams has encrypted her account of having watched the trailer for the next big setpiece problem in this universe. As she explains it, it’s possible to know something too early.” The derision in Fury’s voice told Rhodes he disagreed with her assessment.

“She watched the _movie trailer_ for what’s about to happen to us?” Rhodes asked, stunned. He thought back to all of his interactions with her, how _weary_ she’d seemed, how frustrated and hurt Tony had been when he thought she was keeping something from him. The two had reconciled the day after her rescue, but if Tony didn’t know about this…

“And encrypted her account of it in a file with a password we can only fail to input three times before it’s deleted. She got Stark’s AI to assist with that. We haven’t been able to break into it in the months since she told me about the file.”

“She _told_ you about it?”

 _“Graciously,_ yeah,” Fury spat. “She’s useful, she’s smart, and her analysis of the cave system she was held in is up to SHIELD agent standards, but I’m sure you’ll understand why I think she and Stark are a perfect match for each other, God _fucking_ help us.”

“The only thing I can recall that seemed off is her concern for the pilot of the HYDRA operative’s plane. She had been forced to heal him after the plane began to taxi, but he was recovered enough to escape through the destroyed tail. Miss Adams seemed to think he was still onboard and thus died when the plane overran the runway and crashed.” She’d been distraught and resistant to speaking about the rescue events, to the point of obvious physical pain.

“Stark’s report on the tower attack bears that out,” Fury said.

“I’m sorry?” Rhodes asked, confused.

“In the plane, did you see anything incongruous, unusual, even impossible? The pilot’s body dead on the floor, after you knew he’d escaped, something like that?”

He thought back. The only thing he could remember was how convinced Evie had been that she’d gotten blood all over his suit. There hadn’t been any. Rhodes told Fury about this.

Fury sat back in his seat. “The videos from her torture at the hands of HYDRA shows whenever that particular subject was involved, everyone involved was locked down. No sights, no sounds, no skin visible. They navigated the room with guide wires.” He held up a hand to cover his good eye. “I think your suit thwarted the guy. Without access to your senses, with your heads-up correcting for anomalies, he couldn’t get to your mind. It’s clear HYDRA knew the extent of what that guy could do, Colonel. I doubt they were satisfied with just one of him.”

“You think there’s evidence of another HYDRA agent with that kind of power in her file?” Rhodes asked. He’d seen the security footage from the tower. A wave of terror had surged around the man. People had thrown themselves around as if dodging invisible projectiles, huddled in corners in empty rooms even after his death, seeming to be actively afraid of whatever they thought was guarding them. Only after the sound sequence was released over the PA did people start behaving as normal.

“I don’t know what I don’t know, and I don’t appreciate that state of being,” Fury said with barely-concealed anger.

“Best I can do is keep it in mind, and get back to you with anything new. I don’t recall anything that could be used as a password, particularly not something that pre-dates that mission,” Rhodes told Fury. “If you’re concerned about more of them, though, it might be worth making that countermeasure available in the field.”

“That, I can do.” Fury stood, reached out his hand. Rhodes shook it. 

“We’d lucked out so far that the only deep emotional attachment among the Avengers is the friendship between Romanoff and Barton,” Fury said, sighing. “Stark was already volatile when he thought she was keeping something personal to just him a secret. This…” he trailed off.

“You asking for an intervention, Director?”

“If you can stomach it.”

  
  
  
**EVIE AND TONY WILL RETURN IN 'LET SHE WHO IS WORTHY DO NO HARM'**

**Author's Note:**

> If you're a fan of Loki and compelling worldbuilding, interesting OCs, and mysteries, I suggest checking out You've Got Sucker's Luck by Wrathkitty here on AO3 (https://archiveofourown.org/works/16201679) . Wrathkitty is a great writer and I've enjoyed both her kind words and stories she's posted, and just like I said about encouragement, I think she deserves some! 
> 
> I also want to thank BrightestMoony for her continued fantasticness as a sounding board and encouragement QUEEN for everything I do. Couldn't / wouldn't want to do this without you!


End file.
